Walking With Achilles
by Eleiece
Summary: Sam leaps into a woman married to a serial killer. In the original history, Derek was never caught, even getting away with his wife's murder. But after experiencing Derek's rage and intimidating, will Sam be able succeed? This story is now complete!
1. Chapter 1

**Walking With Achilles**

By: Eleiece Krawiec

PROLOGUE

All around and through him was the deep, all encompassing brilliant blue. For so long now _how long?_ it had become his only refuge from the hurt, pain and ever endless stream of problems that had become his lot in...life?...the universe?...to solve. Now, as with the many times before, as he paused within it, waiting to be dropped into yet another life that needed something put right, he caught his thoughts turning toward the wish that he could linger in it for just a while, that he could rest. And each time that thought occurred to him, it seemed that... Something... Someone took notice of it.

He felt an uneasiness come over him. A thick, ominous apprehension seemed to saturate his very essence and he knew without a doubt that, if he were in his own body, that a cold shiver would have run down his spine. That feeling only continued to grow as he sensed his movement through the blue beginning to slow.

As his transit slowed, blurs of the life he was about to enter began to take on recognizable shape and colors, the endless silence of the blue fading as sounds began to sharpen. Feeling the unmistakable tingle as he and the individual whose life he was about to enter exchanged places, he felt something he'd never felt in any prior Leap. A deep, soul-cloaking apprehension that quickly escalated into an icy cold fear permeated every atom of his being.

_Oh, please, no!_ he cried wordlessly even as the blue faded and he felt his body become solid again. _Please don't make me do this._

_Are you afraid? _

_Yes!_ Sam cried out into the receding blue.

_Then you must face that which you fear, and grow._


	2. Chapter 2

**Walking With Achilles** by C. Eleiece Krawiec

Chapter 1

She looked up at him from the tubful of warm, frothy, peach-scented bubbles, her violet-blue eyes fixed on the face of the man kneeling so attentively beside the tub.

Taking a single white rosebud from the bouquet he had brought her, Sharon Kramer's most persistent suitor delicately settled it in the hint of her full cleavage revealed by the thick bubbles.

"I'm so glad we got that silly misunderstanding cleared up, sweetheart," he murmured as he leaned over to kiss her full lips. "But then...", he traced one finger along the curve of her cheek, "it's always so much fun to make up from a lover's spat." He brushed a light kiss on the crown of dark red curls pinned loosely atop her head, then got up. "I'll take care of these," he said picking up the bouquet of eleven white roses, "then let myself out."

As he started to pull the broad white door closed, he paused to take one last look around at the appointments of the large bathroom, things only wealth could afford. Things like the plush winter white carpet or the two small Waterford crystal chandeliers that hung from the high ceiling or the raised imported round black marble tub with three low steps leading up to it. Like the matching black marble counter that went around the entire circumference of the large round bathroom. Like the ten graceful jade vases filled with white roses perfectly spaced at six foot intervals on the counter, their beauty reflected in the floor to ceiling mirrored walls.

"Just one...no, two more things, Sharon," the tall, debonair young man said looking at ivory-skinned, red haired beauty lounging in the tub. "Don't ever say "no" to me again, and..." he felt inside his coat pocket and touched the small plastic bag, the item it held still vaguely warm. "...and don't ever look down your nose at anybody again. Bye, sweetheart." Blowing a kiss to the silent girl staring at him, he drew the door shut very gently.

Completely unhurried the tall young man dressed in dark slacks and a black turtleneck sweater went noiselessly down the broad "open fan" staircase. Exiting out the front door, he wasn't alarmed by the fact that the entire neighborhood was in total darkness; not even the moon was out. Punching in the "set alarm" code on the security system panel by the door, he stepped out, then made sure that the door's dead bolt was in place and the lock on the door itself was set. Then he put the keys back under the upper left hand corner broad black doormat and strolled calmly down the front walk.

Reaching the black florist's delivery van parked at the curb, he paused just long enough to peel off the smooth magnetic letters that spelled out "Custom Floral Fantasies" written in flourished gold letters on both sides of the van. Getting into the van, Sharon Kramer's visitor tossed both the magnetic letters and the bouquet over his shoulder, then carefully checked his appearance in the rear view mirror. Throwing a final disdainful glance at the huge house with graceful white columns framing the double front doors, he put the van in gear and drove away. In the total darkness caused by the city-wide blackout that had started almost two hours ago, the van, its headlights dark, vanished into the night.

----------

Tommie had started her vigil at ten thirty last night, sitting in the high backed rocking chair by the open double bedroom windows, the cheap sheer peach colored curtains drawn back so she could see the driveway. Even the soft, warm summer breeze that came softly through the windows could not dispel the fear that chilled her as she endlessly rehearsed what she knew she had to say to Derek. But it wasn't until five thirty the next morning that she saw the Caprice pull into the driveway.

She knew that amorous gleam in his eye when he came into the bedroom a few minutes later, took her in his arms and began fondling her through the almost sheer dark blue nylon nightgown. She didn't know whether it was the fear of what this man, her husband, might do to her, or her own revulsion of her cowardice to do what she knew needed to be done that finally unlocked her throat and let the words spill out.

"No, Derek," she said, managing to wriggle free of his grasp, and back away. "Not right now."

"What did you say?" his voice was ominously soft as something "clicked' inside him, his brown eyes narrowed to slits as he moved toward his wife. "Did you just say "no" to me?"

"Y…yes I did," Tommie said, looking up at him. "I need to tell you something." She hesitated. "I...can't...I won't help you anymore."

Yanking his jacket off, the six foot two inch man advanced menacingly on the frightened woman now unwittingly backing herself against the wall. "You know what will happen to you if you don't, don't you Tommie?"

"I don't care anymore," she shouted at him. "Anything...even jail would be better than this...hell. No! I don't care what you do to me, I won't do it any more. I won't! I won't!"

Black, boiling rage welled up inside the man who could have been a model for GQ, and ignoring his terrified young wife's screams, slammed his fist into her face once, twice three times. The last hit knocked her down, but his anger was too hot, his rage too black for him to notice that for several seconds she seemed almost dizzy as she lay on the floor, her gown wildly askew.

"Get up!" he screamed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Walking With Achilles** by C. Eleiece Krawiec

Chapter 2

It was one thirty-eight a.m. at Project Quantum Leap. Al, unable to sleep because of an argument with Tina which had ended in her throwing him out of her bed, and her quarters, a half hour ago, was the only occupant of the Project's cafeteria. He had just raised his cup to take a sip of the always too strong coffee when Ziggy spoke. Startled, he jerked involuntarily, sloshing the hot brew over his fingers.

"OUCH!" he yelped, dropping the cup. "Dammit Ziggy, next time use those hybrid "brains" of yours and gimme a little warning!" Reflexively he put his burned fingers in his mouth. "Geez, that hurts!" he mumbled around his fingers. "What is it?"

"Admiral," Ziggy said. "a new visitor has arrived in the Waiting Room and, Doctor Beckett's life is peril!"

The Project's staff and security personnel had learned years ago to get out of the way and stay out of the way if they ever saw Admiral Calavicci racing down the corridors.

"Gangway!" Al now shouted at the lone person walking down the corridor. Instantly, Ted Brunson, one of the lower ranked computer technicians just going on duty, flattened himself against the corridor wall. Wordlessly he watched the Project's Observer, dressed in red and white candy cane-striped silk pajamas and robe, fly past him as if being chased by a horde of ex-wives. Then, without a second thought to the wild-eyed man who had just flown by him, continued on his way.

"Door!" Al shouted as he rounded the last corner before the Waiting Room. As the door slid silently up and he ran into the Waiting Room, a woman's terrified screams filled the large white room. The Observer was used to seeing visitors arrive in countless states of mind and in various states of dress and occasionally, undress. But none of that made it any easier for him to look at the terrified young woman, wearing Sam's aura, cowering on the floor, shrinking back from the Project psychiatrist kneeling in front of her, trying to calm her hysteria.

The purple-black flesh around her eyes, the blood running from her nose and the two deep, bloody splits on her lower lip bore gruesome testimony to the vicious beating she'd been in the midst of when Samuel Beckett leaped into her life. The words she kept screaming kicked the ancient "fight or flight" instinct in the Observer into overdrive as adrenaline poured into his bloodstream.

"He's going to kill me," the slender woman cowering on the floor near a wall screamed over and over. "Oh, God, please don't let him kill me! He's insane!"

Listening to his instincts, Al moved carefully forward until he was just a few feet away from the pair on the floor. "I need a name, Beeks," he said in a voice that would brook no opposition.

Verbena, also clad in pajamas and robe, glanced up at him from where she knelt before the physically abused and terrified new visitor.

"Not right now, Al," she said. "You'll have to contact Sam without a name," she said, trying to make herself heard over the unceasing, terrified screams. "From what I've been about to make out since she arrived not quite a minute ago, I think it's her husband who's beating her. From her actions, and what's she's screaming, I advise you to tell Doctor Beckett not to fight back."

"Are you out of your freakin' mind?" Al demanded. "Look at her! She looks like she's been beaten with a baseball bat, and you want me to tell Sam not to fight back?" He and Verbena started when the visitor screamed again.

"Oh God, no! No, Derek! Please...not the bat! Not the bat!"

The look in the psychiatrist's eyes as she met Al's eyes spoke volumes.

"I'm on my way," Al said grimly, and hurried out of the Waiting Room and headed toward the Control Room at a flat out run. "Ziggy, tell Gooshie to get the Imaging Chamber on line. I'm heading there now," Al said aloud as he ran.

"The Imaging Chamber is on line, Admiral," Ziggy responded.

In the Control Room door, Al slowed down just enough to grab the handlink Gooshie held out, then ran up the ramp to the secured outer door of the Imaging Chamber. Once inside he barked, "Center me on Sam...fast, Gooshie! It could mean his life!"

Through the energy of myriad years swirling around him, one thought kept running through Al's mind. Please let me get to Sam in time. Then, "We have a lock," Gooshie's voice echoed in the Imaging Chamber.

Punching in the opening code, Al watched the door between the future and whatever past Sam was in, slide up just in time to see a tall, hard muscled man grab Sam by the hair and haul him to his feet. For an instant Al could only watch as the man, using the strength in just one arm, took Sam by the throat and slammed him against a wall. Then his 'Nam instincts kicked in, and he rushed out of the Imaging Chamber just as the enraged man slammed Sam against the wall again, then began pushing and lifting Sam up against the wall as if his friend was a rag doll. It was at that moment that he caught sight of Sam's right hand curling into a fist at his side.

"Sam!" Al yelled. "Don't hit him!"


	4. Chapter 4

**Walking With Achilles ** by C. Eleiece Krawiec

Chapter 3

The last of the Leap-in blurriness was fading from his eyes when a hard, backhand slap sent Sam sprawling.

"Get up, Tommie," a man's voice screamed.

Sam hated it when a leap started out with him on the defensive, especially since he didn't know whom he had leaped into, or why he was having to defend himself. But none of that matter right now. Waiting a second for his vision to focus, the time traveler looked up at the dark blonde young man coming at him with clenched fists and an expression of uncontrolled rage. As his vilely angry aggressor reached for him, from his sprawled position on the floor, Sam kicked and sent the man flying backwards, then scrambled to his feet.

"Listen.." Sam began, assuming a semi crouched stance, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, ready to defend himself from any direction. But even his martial arts training was no match for the runaway locomotive of rage bearing down on him. Again, another stinging, head-snapping backhand knocked him down.

"Get up, dammit!" the man screamed at him again.

"Why? So you can knock me down again?" Sam gasped, tasting blood from the two fresh splits on his lower lip. "No thanks. I'll stay here." 

Sam yelped when, for his defiance, the man lunged forward, grabbed a handful of his hair and shook him till Sam was sure his teeth were rattling. He gasped again when he was hauled to his feet and slammed against a wall. Curling one hand into a fist, Sam was about to throw a punch when he heard the Imaging Chamber door open. "Al!" he gasped, wincing as his head was banged against the wall.

"Al?" the angry man spat the name, his face inches from Sam's becoming almost white as his rage intensified. "You filthy, cheating bitch! Who is he? Who!"

Hearing his assailant call him "bitch" clued Sam in a bit about the person he had leaped into. Oh, God...I'm a woman!

"Sam!" the Observer yelled. "Don't hit him!"

"What!" Sam gasped as the powerful fingers holding him under his chin tightened, fingernails digging into his flesh, not at all sure he had heard the Observer correctly.

"His name's Derek, Sam, and he's a loose cannon. A real psycho," Al said, keeping his words clear and crisp. "Choose your words carefully, otherwise Ziggy says it's a ninety-eight percent probability he's gonna kill you in the next two minutes."

"Who is he!" 

Sam's mind whirled frantically in search of an answer as the screamed question reverberated in his ears. He didn't know what caused him to whisper, "D...daddy?"

"Isn't it just too damned bad he's been dead for seven months?" the young man mocked. "That means it's just us, baby. You and me."

I'm a woman! Sam thought frantically, and married to this manic!

Tightening his grip on Tommie's bruised and battered face, blood from her nose and split lip covering his hand, Derek pushed her chin up and clamped his other hand on her throat. Then, using just one hand, forced her harder against and up the wall, the tips of her toes barely brushing the floor. "I told your old man the day we got married that I'd take care of his little girl, and I damn well meant it."

Reaching into his pocket with his free hand, he drew out a switchblade, and flicked it open. He liked the terror he saw in her blue eyes, now barely visible through the ugly, purpling swelling around her eyes. A twisted satisfaction showed on his face as he delicately put the point of the deadly blade between her small breasts, her nylon gown melting open as he slowly drew the razor-edged blade down the length of her torso. Gently he pressed it until she winced as the point of the blade pierced the outer layer of skin on her lower belly.

"You ever threaten me like that again, Tommie," he said in silken tones, "and I'll take care of you all right. I'll gut you, you worthless whore, and dump your body in the middle of main street. You got that?" 

Sam managed a semblance of a nod, the back of his head rubbing against the wall. "I won't do it again," he pleaded, his voice a strangled whisper. "Please...just don't hurt me any more." The way he was held was inhibiting his breathing, and Sam felt instinctive panic rising as his lungs burned for air. "I..can't...breathe," he whispered, looking into his assailant's eyes.

As suddenly as he'd slammed Tommie against the wall, Derek let go, watching indifferently as the beaten woman collapsed on the floor, gulping in air. Taking a step toward her, he watched his wife of seven months jerk back, scooting back until she cowered against the wall, one arm raised near her face in a semblance of protection. Using the toe of his polished shoe, he pushed the hem of her gown, already hiked up to the middle of her thighs by her scooching, higher. He smiled when he felt her trembling at his touch. Drawing his foot back, Derek squatted on his haunches before her, and made a deliberate show of folding the switchblade and returning it to his pocket, never taking his eyes from hers.

Sam couldn't prevent the quiver that ran through him when Tommie's husband reached to take hold of his chin again. The almost mindless fear coursing through his body kept the time traveler motionless when the powerfully built man leaned forward to kiss his split, bleeding lips lingeringly. Revulsion washed over Sam when the man slid his hand under the hem of the gown, moving it intimately up the inside of Sam's right thigh.

"Don't be like the others, Tommie," he said, the gentleness of his tone belied by the look in his eyes. "Don't ever tell me "No", again."

Sam couldn't help the whimper of relief when his "husband" suddenly stopped short of groping him, and stood up. He watched the man turn to leave then thinking of something, turn back.

"And honey, don't stand on a kitchen chair trying to reach those high cupboards. Next time get the kitchen step ladder."

Sam nodded his understanding of what he, Tommie was being told.

"I've got to get to work," the young man said, turning again. "How about if I bring Chinese home for dinner tonight?"

"Okay," Sam said carefully. "What time will you be home?"

"When I get here," was the quiet reply. "Bye."

Sam watched as Derek walked out of the bedroom. He continued to wait, and only when he heard the front door open then close, then a car's engine roar to life a minute after that, did he dare to move. Pushing himself up to a sitting position, he looked up at Al who hadn't moved from the spot he stopped at when he'd rushed out of the Imaging Chamber.


	5. Chapter 5

**Walking With Achilles** by C. Eleiece Krawiec

Chapter 4

Not even the Leap when Sam had come within seconds of being electrocuted just as that Leap had begun had made Al feel as helpless as he had for the last four minutes. After telling his friend to choose his words carefully, the Observer could only watch as Sam, battered and bloody, was intimidated, kissed and almost fondled by the "animal" married to the terrified woman being cared for in the Waiting Room. Like Sam, Al continued to hold his tongue until the brute left the house, and he heard a car start, then drive away. Going to the bedroom's double windows, Al managed to catch sight of the back of a red Chevy Caprice, Tommie's husband at the wheel, disappear from sight. But not before Al had read, then punched in the numbers on the license plate into the handlink.

"Gooshie," Al said aloud. "Have Ziggy run that plate and get back to me immediately. I got a bad feeling about this Leap, so don't take any guff from 'her'."

Sam, aching all over, his head pounding, still sat with his back the wall. Gently he dabbed at the blood trickling from his nose while he waited, listening to the Observer.

"From the looks of your face, I'd bet your nose is broken. Those shiners are gonna be real beauts by tonight," Al said quietly. "How do you feel?"

"Like I've been beaten within an inch of my life, and just missed being raped," Sam snapped. "How the hell do you think I feel?" Moving carefully, he got to his feet, putting a hand on the wall to steady himself when he suddenly felt lightheaded. When his head was clear again, he turned to Al. "Besides the fact that he's my "husband", just who is that manic?" Sam demanded, his tone soft in acquiescence to the pounding in his head. "Who's hell have I been dropped into, Al?"

Al started punching buttons on the handlink. "Let me see if Verbena's had any luck calming the woman in the Waiting Room. Believe me, Sam, she wasn't in any state to talk coherently when she arrived. In fact, she was still screaming that the guy...Derek was gonna kill her..."

"I know how she feels," Sam said muttered as he walked slowly across the room to sit on the bed.

"Okay, we got something," Al said, punching in responsive codes as Ziggy fed information into the handlink. "It's not much, but Verbena was able to get the woman's name, and Ziggy ran the license plate from the car. The car is registered to a Derek Floyd Emerson. He lives, with his wife, Tommie...you...at 2113 Corona Drive in New Orleans. Hey...you're in the Big Easy!" Al enthused. "This is the partyingest town in the world. I remember one time..."

At the moment though, all Sam could, or wanted, to think about was getting some medical attention; from the way his head felt, he was about ninety percent certain he had a concussion. And, if the gleam in the Observer's eyes was any indication, Sam knew he was about to be regaled with a bawdy recitation of some misadventure Al had been part of in his younger years.

"Al!" Sam nipped the budding story sharply, then gasped at the way his vision blurred for a second when he snapped his head up to glare at the hologram. "Could you please...just tell me whatever it is you have on whoever I am." He eyed the pillow longingly, but knew it was out of the

question until after he was examined by a doctor.

"Sorry, Sam," Al apologized. Kicking himself for wandering down memory lane, he began punching buttons on the handlink and started reading the information that Ziggy was providing.

"We don't have much so far, considering what your counterpart in the Waiting Room looked like when she arrived." he began. "Okay, uh your name is Thomasina Victoria Emerson, but everyone calls you Tommie. You're twenty-four years old, and both your parents are dead; your father, Albert Jefferson Hewitt Chastaing died of a massive heart attack three weeks after your marriage seven months ago."

"Seven months ago from...when? What year is this?"

"Oh, it's...uh, today is April 7, 1987. Which means that you...Tommie and Derek were married in October 1986. October 2, 1986 to be exact."

"How did she end up married to that animal?" Sam asked as he stood up and moved toward the open bathroom door on the opposite side of the bed.

The low glare florescent lighting in the bathroom hurt Sam's eyes as he stood at the sink and looked at what should have been the fairly pretty face of Thomasina Emerson. Instead, the face that looked back at him, framed by short, curly blonde hair was, he suspected an almost mirror image of his own face. Sam reached up to touch the shallow cut at Tommie's hairline, just above her left eye, watching as the battered young woman in the mirror mimicked his moves. There were streaks of partially dried blood down the left side of her face and matted in her hair.

Tommie's eyes..Blue, Sam thought, peering closely at Tommie's reflection...were barely visible through the swollen, purple-black flesh around her eyes. The horrific bruising, caused by her nose being broken,extended halfway down her face. Blood from her nose had run down over her mouth, mixing with the blood from the splits on her lip.

Turning on the cold water, Sam let it run a minute while he found a washcloth in the narrow linen cupboard behind the door. Wringing it out in the cool water, he began to gently wipe his face, gasping and wincing with each touch.

"How's Tommie doing?" Sam asked when, after five minutes he was satisfied that the bleeding from his nose and lower lip was stanched. When Al didn't respond with a few seconds, he glanced him. He had seen similar expressions during other leaps, and each time it meant he wasn't about to be given any encouragement that the leap was about to take a positive swing.

"Go ahead," he said wearily, knowing that whatever it was he was about to hear was going to multiply whatever it was he was facing in this Leap. "Drop the piano on my head. What?"

"Remember," Al began, "that these are Ziggy's first super rough calculations about what you're here to do."

"Yeah?" Sam didn't bother to look up as he dabbed some antiseptic cream he'd found in the medicine cupboard on the small cut on his lower belly where Derek had paused with the point of the switchblade. He looked up when Al didn't speak quickly enough.

"Ziggy says that Derek's the reason you're here."

"Then that trillion dollar bucket of bolts is out of her hybrid mind if she thinks I'm gonna help that son of a bitch do anything," Sam snapped, then wished he hadn't when the pounding in his head increased.

"You're not here to help him 'do' anything," Al said carefully. "You're here to stop him."

"From doing what?"

"Killing fifteen more women over the next twenty-seven months."

"Fifteen more wo...what is this guy? A demented murderer?"

"A lot of people in this city believed that he was but, nothing could ever be proved. There wasn't even circumstantial evidence that could be linked to him in any way whatsoever." He paused. "There's more."

"Isn't there always?' Feeling his knees begin to buckle, Sam grabbed the lip of the sink then sat down on the closed lid of the toilet, then stared at Al as he continued speaking.

"Ziggy also says that if you don't come up with something that'll link him to the eight women who were raped and murdered over the last seventeen months...he's going to kill you some time in the next nine days."


	6. Chapter 6

**Walking With Achilles** by C. Eleiece Krawiec

Chapter 5

Sam finished cleaning the worst of the coagulated blood from his face, then moving carefully, returned to the bedroom. Seeing Thomasina's purse on the floor beside the bed, he went through it, finding only a wallet, a compact and lipstick, a comb and a small address book. Thumbing through it, he found the number he was looking for and dialed it.

"Who are you calling?" Al asked, moving closer.

"Her doctor," Sam replied. "If I go to the emergency room looking like this, the cops will be called in."

"That sounds like a damned smart thing to do, in your case," Al said.

Sam carefully shook his head as he waited for his call to be answered. "I don't think so. This...what's his name?"

"Derek."

"...Derek is, as you put it, a loose cannon. I don't know what it was that set him off just before I leaped in, but whatever it was, if the cops show up and start hassling him, he's gonna take it out on me. And...Hello?" Sam responded to the speaker at the other end of the line.

"Dr. Conroy's office. May I help you?"

"Yes," Sam said. "This is.." he drew a blank on his host's name and looked frantically to Al.

"Thomasina Emerson," Al supplied.

"..Thomasina Emerson," Sam finished. "I need an appointment to see the doctor, today."

"Just a moment Mrs. Emerson," the woman at the doctor's office said. "What seems to be the problem?"

"I..I was standing on a chair trying to reach a high shelf, and I fell. I think I may have broken my nose," Sam finished, hoping that the story didn't sound as lame to the nurse as it did to him. The long pause at the other end of the line made Sam a bit edgy, but he relaxed when the nurse told him, "The only thing I have open is a nine-forty five appointment.."

"I'll be there," Sam said quickly then blurted, "Where's the office?"

This time the answer was a bit slower to come. Sam could almost see the frown furrowing the woman's brow. "149 Meadowdale Drive," the nurse said carefully. "Are you okay, Tommie?"

Al didn't like the startled look on Sam's face. "What?"

Sam put a hand over the mouthpiece and said softly, "She knows me.. Tommie!" Then, to the nurse, "Uh, yeah, I'm okay. Well, except that I think I broke my nose when I fell. Nine forty-five, right? Okay, I'll be there. Bye," he hurriedly finished the conversation and hung up the phone. He glanced at the clock on the bedside table; four minutes after eight.

While Sam found underwear and a simple pullover dress to put on, Al had Ziggy run a background check on Tommie Emerson's family and acquaintances. "Focus on her medical history, Gooshie," Al said to the chief programmer. "Find out who in this Dr. Conroy's office knows Tommie on a first name basis."

"Anything else, Admiral?" Gooshie asked.

"Yeah, I want you to sync me in to this Derek's brainwaves," Al said. "He's one sick bastard and I want to know where he is at all times."

"Will do, sir," Gooshie replied. "If you want, I'll have Ziggy start a life function analysis on him."

"Yeah!" Al said. "I like that idea. And if you see where he's about to blow a gasket, you signal me so I can check him out."

By the time Sam was ready to leave for the doctor's office, Al was decidedly uneasy about the way he was acting. The Project's Director was moving very carefully, and pausing too frequently because of dizziness for his peace of mind.

"Sam, I think maybe you should call a cab," Al said. "You really don't look in any shape to be driving. In fact..," he pulled out the handlink and punched in a code as he said aloud, "Gooshie, find the number of a cab service near this address."

"I'm..." Sam began then just held onto the back of the couch while the room swirled crazily around him. "Ohhh," he whispered as he felt his stomach begin to churn as his susceptibility to motion sickness kicked in. Closing his eyes he held tightly to the couch until he felt the swirling in his head ease. Once it passed, Sam moved around and sat down, thankful that there was a phone on the coffee table. He dialed the number Al gave him, asking that the driver come to the door to help him out to the cab, then leaned back and closed his eyes to wait.

"Sam!" Al said sharply when he saw his friend close his eyes. "Get up!" He didn't like startling Sam, but knew it was for his own good as he watched him get up again.

Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and a man's voice responded to Sam's query before opening the door, "Golden Cab Service. You called for a cab?" The time traveler smiled weakly at the man's shocked, "God Almighty, lady, which cross-town bus hit you!" as he locked the front door.

Putting his arm around the battered young woman, the cab driver helped her down the steps and into the cab. "Where to?" he asked, getting behind the wheel and putting the cab in gear. "The Emergency Room?"

"149 Meadowcrest Drive," Sam said. "I want to go to Dr. Conroy's office." It was a short ride to the doctor's office, and Sam was grateful again when, after collecting his fare, the cabbie insisted on walking Sam into the doctor's office and seeing him seated in the waiting room.

"Thank you," Sam said taking a couple of bills from his purse and handing them to the cab driver.

"You'll be okay, now..," the man said with a smile that made the lines around his dark eyes crinkle. "...I hope," he said under his breath as he returned to his cab.

"Tommie! My God what happened?" exclaimed the nurse/receptionist at the window. She was a tall woman with short cropped red hair and brown eyes, dressed in rose colored scrubs. She charged out the door leading back to the examining rooms, making a beeline to Sam. "Oh, honey..." "I'm...okay," Sam began, but his attempt at replying was cut short as the woman took his face gently between her hands and took a closer look.

"Did he hit you again?" the woman (Sam sneaked a quick glance at her name tag...Joanna) demanded sharply. Then before Sam could reply, "Wait until Dr. Conroy sees this! He'll go through the ceiling!"

Joanna was right. Dr. John Conroy, usually an equably tempered man, had come close to loosing his calm, easy going demeanor when he opened the door to the examining room, and got a look at the battered face of a young woman he had helped bring into the world twenty-four years before. Over the years he had seen and cared for too many results of hot tempered husbands and boyfriends taking their anger out on the women in their lives.

"What was it this time, Tommie?" he asked, glancing at the notations on the chart he'd taken from the slot on the door. "You forget to make his coffee? Or did you forget to pick up his jackets at the cleaners?" John Conroy asked as calmly as he could as he took Sam's face between his hands, looking carefully at every inch of what he knew was normally a pretty face.

"I...uhh!" Sam sucked in his breath at the sharp pain that seemed to radiate over his whole face when the doctor gently probed the bridge of his nose. "..No. I was standing on a chair trying to reach one of the high shelves in the kitchen, and lost my balance."

"Uh huh," the doctor murmured, unconvinced by the story. Taking the pencil flashlight from his pocket, he checked Sam's pupil reaction carefully. "What did you hit on the way down?" Next he checked Sam's ears. "No blood in either ear."

Thank God Sam thought with relief, then rushed to respond to the question. "Uh...the counter," he tried to think quickly but reply as calmly as he could. "The big can of... peaches I was after fell and hit me right between the eyes. Doctor..."

"Be still," Dr. Conroy said as he continued his minutely thorough examination, running his fingers through Tommie's hair until he found the small bump on the back of her head that he knew he would find. _Not as big as the last time_ he thought.

Turning his attentions to Tommie's body, his sharp gaze caught the bruises around the base of her neck, and he felt the muscles of his face tighten. "Must've been one aggressive can of peaches," he said.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked nervously. He jerked, startled when the Imaging Chamber door opened at that moment. He tried to read the Observer's face, but Al wasn't talking as he moved closer to him.

"The damned thing left bruise marks on your neck when it tried to strangle you," the doctor replied tartly. "I think you better try a different canned fruit. Peaches just don't seem to like you." Stepping to the door he opened it a bit and said, "Amy, come in here, please." Turning back to Sam he said, "Okay, I want you to lie down," he said, moving to help Sam stretch out on the examining table.

When Amy, an older nurse came in, Dr. Conroy carefully examined Tommie for other signs of bruising on her body that would've been hidden by her clothing. The inch long cut on her abdomen, just above her pubic area was the final straw.

"What's this?" he asked, lightly touching the cut that still bore fine bits of coagulated blood. "The TRUTH...Tommie!" he demanded. "Don't demean my intelligence or yours with any more lies. How did you get this cut?"

Sam looked desperately up at Al, but still the Observer remained silent. A slight quirk of one dark eyebrow was the only response he got. But then he must have had a change of heart when he said, "Tell him the truth, Sam." 

"I can't!" he tried to whisper as softly as he could as looked up at Al.

"Tell him!" Al snapped.

"But..."

"Tell him, Sam!" Al barked sharply. "Tell him everything that happened."

"Why?" Sam whispered, confused by Al's sudden blunt attitude.

Dr. Conroy caught the whispered question. "Because if you don't, the next time I see you it'll be at the morgue to identify your body after Derek kills you!" he said harshly. "My God, Tommie, this is the third time in four months that you've come in here with bruises on your throat where he's tried to strangle you! You've got a concussion...again …from him slamming you up against a wall." 

Sam could only stare as Dr. John Conroy voiced his frustration about Tommie's handling of her situation. Only the doctors who exposed their hearts to the hurt that caring personally about their patients and what went on in their lives, reacted as this man did. Don't get involved was one of the unwritten credos that some doctors and nurses lived by. Yet there were far many more than those who lived by that creed, who strove in the opposite direction, who each day in some small way opened their hearts and lives up to the hurt and pain of really caring about those who sought them out for healing. But what they gained in spite of the daily doses of pain that the "bamboo shoots under the fingernails of their lives" that such caring brought, was a daily enrichment in their souls and spirits that they truly were living their lives to the fullest as they strove to give the utmost of their skills and knowledge to the suffering. And in that striving more often than not, giving hope and encouragement to the dispirited and hopeless. But the

ultimate payment for those who daily put their hearts in the line of

battle for their patients was, more often than not, the heartfelt "Thank you". It was a payment that Sam, some wisp of memory reminded him, which he had received a time or two. And now, Sam saw in the face and attitude of Dr. John Conroy that same "daring to care" as he strove to make the badly battered young woman before him understand, that someone did care about her.

As the realization of his thoughts crystallized, Sam felt like maybe GTFW was giving him some unexpected help as what seemed to be one of his most dangerous leaps was getting started. Pushing himself up to a sitting position, he modestly pulled the paper sheet draped over his lap up against the open front of the paper gown he wore.

"The first thing I remember is him backhanding me," Sam began a careful recounting of every slap, punch, body slam, and incident of intimidation that had been inflicted on him just a couple of hours earlier. God only knows what he did to her before I Leaped in Sam thought as he watched John Conroy make detailed notes on Tommie's medical chart. 

After the doctor finished writing his notes, Sam received treatment for his injuries, including an X-ray of his head ("Yeah, your nose is broken"), and a mild concussion was diagnosed. "Though it's against my better judgment," the doctor said, "I'm going to let you go home. But only with the understanding that you are not to go to sleep, not even a nap, until at least nine o'clock tonight."

"Okay," Sam agreed, as he watched the doctor make more notes on Tommie's chart.

"I know your head's pounding right about now, but don't take anything stronger than aspirin or Tylenol for pain," he admonished. "And no alcohol. And if you start to experience dizziness or nausea, get to the Emergency Room pronto!"

"I will," Sam promised as he sat in the chair beside the examining table still wearing the paper examination gown. He glanced at Al who had been unusually quiet during Sam's entire examination and treatment. He noted that the Observer stood at an angle so that he was slightly to the right and a bit behind him. "Can I get dressed now?"

"Yes." John Conroy paused, one hand on the door knob and turned back to Sam. "I'll help you anyway I can, Tommie. But until you decide to press charges, there's nothing I can do."

"What's eating you?" Sam addressed the question to Al's turned back as he pulled his dress over his head and settled it down over his hips. He moved around so he was facing the Observer. "You've been acting...odd since you popped in. What's wrong Al?"

"While Ziggy was running background checks on the personnel here at Conroy's office, she came across something...interesting about Tommie." Al said. "By the way, Joanna, the receptionist, she's one of Tommie's closest friends, so that's how she knew you. Besides the fact that she's also worked for Dr. Conroy for the last six years."

Sam listened but was more interested in the other thing Al had mentioned. "What did Ziggy find that's so interesting?"

"She's been working for "Sparkle & Shine", a cleaning service, for the last three years," Al began. "It didn't pay a lot but, it helped her get what she wanted...her independence from daddy." 

"Why? Did her father abuse her?" Sam asked, leaning back against the examining table. Purse in hand, he was ready to walk out the door should anyone inquire, but for the moment he waited, listening to what Al was saying.

"No. But she was an only child of well to do parents. Lara Teal Chastaing, her mother, died five years ago, and her father, Albert, about six months ago. And it wasn't until after her old man's funeral that Derek started beating her."

"Why?"

"Well, from what the police dug up on the guy, in the original history, is that he was mad as hell when old man Chastaing's will was read and found out that he'd left almost the entirety of his estate to charity. All he left to Tommie was a lump sum of twenty three thousand dollars which was according to the will..." Al paused, punching codes rapidly into the handlink, then read from the tiny screen, "..."a thousand dollars for every year of your life up to and not to exceed the date of your marriage..."

"What?"

"Seems the old man didn't really care for his daughter's choice of a husband, and let's see if...yeah...here it is. The old man added a codicil to his will the day after Tommie and Derek got married. In that codicil he amended his bequest to her, as well as making his feelings about her choice of Derek plain and sharp as a slap in the face. It said..."On the day of your marriage to Mr. Emerson, a singularly conceited and angry young man who believes the world owes him everything, you were twenty years, five months and six days of age, an adult of sound mind, but, not, in my opinion, of sound judgment. And inasmuch as you willingly spoke the vow..."for richer or for poorer", now let your husband provide for you the rest of your life. In as much as you have chosen to lower yourself from the status into which you were born, by taking Derek Floyd Emerson's name, so do I now chose to lower that which I had so carefully planned and prepared to be yours upon the event of my death. To my daughter, Thomasina Victoria Chastaing Emerson I leave the lump sum of twenty-three thousand dollars, a sum which equates to a thousand dollars for every year of your life up to and not to exceed the date of your marriage."

"And he rapes and murders fifteen more women because of Tommie's inheritance being cut down some? That doesn't make any sense. And I also don't see how it could have any connection with the...how many was it... eight women raped and murdered over the last seventeen months," Sam said his tone incredulous at what he was hearing. "That doesn't make any sense," he repeated.

"I...don't know about those first unfortunate women, Sam," Al said slowly. "But for the ones he'll kill over the next two years, it might, if you take into account the fact that if Tommie had gotten her father's entire estate, which is how his will was originally written, she would have received nearly one and three-quarter million dollars after inheritance taxes and the like. And being a native of Louisiana, and knowing that there's a thing called forced heirship, meaning that he couldn't just cut her completely out of his will, the old guy was smart enough to make sure that the will abided by that, but was still ironclad to the point that it was incontestable." He paused. "For some, like Derek, it would be reason enough." 

"Have you got anything on him yet?" Sam asked. But hysterical screams somewhere in the doctor's office made man and hologram jump. Sam grabbed the door open and ran out.

"NO! NO!" Amy, the older nurse with salt-and-pepper hair sobbed as Dr. Conroy, Joanna and a couple of men in dark suits tried to restrain her struggles to get free from them. "IT'S NOT TRUE! NO! NO!" she screamed again as tears flooded down her shock-paled face as she frantically pushed and twisted, trying to reach the door that led out into the waiting room. "SHARON!" she screamed, "SHAARRONNN!" the raw reality of her grief made her screams bounce off the walls and echo throughout the small office.

"Joanna, get me two milligrams of Valium IM!", the doctor shouted to be heard above Amy's hysterical screams. 

Disentangling herself from the struggling knot of humanity, Joanna flew past Sam, who hastily stepped back. He pressed against the wall again when she flew back by less than thirty seconds later with a capped syringe. "Hold her still for about three seconds", Joanna said.

Sam watched as she flicked the cap off the syringe, but in that same instant, the syringe was knocked out of her hand by her hysterical colleague's struggles. In a flash, he darted forward, and grabbed it up. Without a word he turned and in a smooth, practiced move plunged the needle into the older woman's arm, depressed the plunger, then withdrew the needle, and stepped back. He moved back to stand beside Al, now in the hallway, the look on his face telling Sam that he knew the reason for Amy's grief.

"What happened?" he whispered.

"Ziggy's ninety-nine percent certain that those two parish detectives just told her that her daughter, Sharon's body was found about an hour ago," Al said quietly.

"What!"

Al nodded as he continued. "According to an article in the local paper, Sharon Allegretti Cramer, age twenty-five, was found dead in her home, in the bathtub, on April 7, 1987." He met Sam's eyes. "Her neck was snapped. According to the autopsy report, the coroner said it was a quick, clean break, done either by a professional, or..." 

Sam hated when Al paused in the midst of grim information. "Or?..."

"...or someone very big and very strong. There wasn't any sign of struggle, so they figured she knew the person who killed her."

"None?" Sam frowned. "In the bathroom and there wasn't any sign of struggle at all?"

Al shook his head. Putting his cigar in his mouth, he continued. "They even analyzed the water she was found in; she had been taking a bubble bath. There was also a single long-stemmed white rosebud tucked between her breasts." He paused. "There were vases of white roses all over that bathroom." 

"That's it?" 

"No. There's one other thing," Al said. "Her body had been mutilated." 

Sam felt his skin begin to crawl again when the Observer said, "Her nose had been cut off. Coroner said it was a very clean removal, done either with a scalpel...or a switchblade."


	7. Chapter 7

**Walking With Achilles** by C. Eleiece Krawiec

Chapter 6

Sam watched as the two detectives helped Doctor Conroy move the sedated, weeping Amy to his office at the end of the hall.

Thanks for the help,'' Joanna said, coming up to Sam. I don't know where you got your training, but you handled that just like a pro, Tommie.''

I...watch a lot of medical shows on television,'' Sam said the first thing that came to mind. What happened?'' he asked, nodding toward the back of the hall.

Her daughter, Sharon, was found dead in her home about an hour or so ago,'' Joanna said, confirming what Sam already knew. She was Amy's only child.'' Her eyes softened in sympathy as they strayed to the doctor's office door. Poor thing. Vinnie, her husband died not quite a year ago, and now this.'' She shivered, then said in a low whisper, I heard one of the detectives tell her that they found a rose on her body.''

She shivered again, wrapping her arms around herself tightly. He's back.''

What do you mean?'' Sam asked. Who's back?''

The first one happened on November 2, 1985,'' Joanna said. My birthday.''

What happened?''

The first of what the police called The White Rose'' murders,'' Joanna replied. Then somebody with a sick sense of humor started calling them the Rose-Nose'' murders because in addition to leaving a rose, the bastard also cut off each victim's nose.'' Shaking her head as if to dispel the gruesome path her mind was turning to, she met Sam's eyes and put a hand on his arm. You be careful, Tommie.'' She waited just long enough to see Sam nod then turned toward the front of the office. Almost as an afterthought she said, I'll call you a cab.''

Turning so his back was to Joanna as she dialed the phone, Sam said softly, Have Ziggy research Derek's family. I want to know every about him from what time he was born to the day he dies. And dig into my...Tommie's background, too.''

You got it,'' Al said as he swiftly punched in the request on the handlink. I'll also have Gooshie cross reference every one of the White Rose'' murders with Tommie and Derek's lives.'' He glanced up to find his friend looking at him. What?'' He lowered the handlink. What, Sam?'' The clouded expression on the face he knew almost as well as his own began to bother him as Sam just continued to look at him. Talk to me!'' he ordered sharply.

I'm afraid, Al.'' The words were low but clear. I really don't see how I'm going to pull this one off.'' Sam stared into the dark eyes he'd looked to so often for guidance and reassurance. Now he again searched the depths of those eyes for reassurance, for the even level gaze that would tell him that the Observer knew, without knowing how, that even though this leap had started off horribly, that he would succeed and put right whatever had originally gone wrong. I don't think I can do this.''

Now this is a first,'' Al said, biting the words off as he threw his cigar down, the Chivello disappearing as it lost contact with his hand. Ignoring the startled look on Sam's face he pushed his face as close to Sam's as he could without melting'' into him. The world's most stubborn genius and oldest Boy Scout giving up just because he had a rough start to this leap. Get a grip, Sam!''

Sam, rocked at the vehemence of the Observer's apparent lack of concern, hissed defensively, You try opening your eyes in a strange situation, be nearly beaten to death and almost raped, and see how you react!''

Al understood all too well. My first three days after being captured by the Viet Cong,'' he snapped.

The ugly memories he'd buried what seemed centuries ago, slipped back into Al's mind as easily as putrid quicksilver. He remembered the intimidation, the humiliation and how easy it would have been to give up. Even twenty-eight years after the fact, standing in the Imaging Chamber Al felt the faded scars on his back tingle as he felt again the beatings when he hadn't surrendered his will to that of his captors.

I know what it feels like to be punched and kicked and beaten until I was a bloody pulp,'' he said with a passionate intensity he rarely allowed even those closest to him to see. And there wasn't any nearly'' for me. When I didn't break, those bastards raped me every day in those three days.''

But the memories also brought with them the survival training and other things that had gotten the young Naval pilot through that and all the times that followed. I couldn't.. didn't let em know I was afraid,'' Al went on, his tone a bit calmer but no less intense as he used his voice to force his friend to hold his gaze. And you can't let Derek see it in you either, Sam. Because when he sees that you...that Tommie has given up, he'll have won.'' He paused. And when that happens, when any bastard like that wins, you're the one who pays... usually with your life.''

The expression on Sam's face took the some of the heat out of Al's words. You'll do it, Sam,'' he said with quiet force. You wouldn't have been brought here if ... Somebody didn't think you could pull it off. And with me watching your back, the odds are even more in your favor.''

Your cab's here,'' Joanna interrupted the harsh pep talk she didn't know was going on. You okay, Tommie?'' she asked. You look.. I dunno know...a little flushed. You feel alright?''

Before Sam could respond, the handlink squealed, and he could only wonder as he watched Al read the information being transmitted then immediately order, Center me on him, Gooshie!'', and pop out. He jumped when Joanna touched his arm.

Tommie, take it easy. It's just me. Are you sure you're okay?'' Joanna asked, slipping an arm around Sam's shoulder. Do you want me to drive you home?''

I...I'm not...''

You're not thinking of going to work are you? Tommie, you can't...''

No, I'm not going into work,'' Sam answered. I..you just startled me.''

Sam made the appropriate responses as Joanna walked him out to the cab. After closing the door, she had bent down to look at him and said, "Call me if you need me, honey. Remember,'' she reached in to put a hand on Sam's arm, I've got that extra room if you need a place to stay.''

Thanks,'' he said with as much of a smile as he could muster, then leaned back against the seat as the cab began to move.


	8. Chapter 8

**Walking With Achilles** by C. Eleiece Krawiec

Chapter 7

After thinking up new ways to spend the generous inheritance left to her by her grandmother, Allison's favorite pastime over the past three years had become luring in and then tossing aside as many men as she could, especially those with greedy eyes on her inheritance. Not a classic beauty, still she was attractive, and kept herself as well-groomed as inherited "old money" could afford. That "special" grooming had in turn helped to keep her with a steady supply of always eager male admirers. Six weeks ago she had decided that Derek Emerson, the country club's newest junior golf instructor would be her next conquest.

She had sensed, and had been excited by, the barely contained tension and restlessness hiding behind a perfect smile and easy banter. The fact that there wasn't a spare ounce of fat anywhere on his well-muscled physique hadn't hurt either. But what had caused her to decide on him was a conversation she'd had with Nooreen Swansley, another patron of the very exclusive country club.

"You can't be serious!"

"Why not?" Allison asked as she and Nooreen, one of the only three young women at the club who were even close to her financial and social status, got out of her black Alfa Romeo and headed into the club early that Tuesday morning.

"For one thing," Nooreen said, grabbing her tennis racket from the backseat and falling in step with her friend, "he gives me the creeps." 

"Jeremy gives me the creeps..."

"Not funny!" Nooreen responded sharply.

Allison grinned, unable to resist another dig about her friend's probably soon to be fiancée'. "I mean, dating a grave digger..."

"He's a mortician, not a grave digger! There's a big difference," Nooreen hotly defended her boyfriend.

In spite of her friend's "creepy" opinion of the new golf instructor, it hadn't taken long for Allison to draw him in. She had afforded him countless opportunities to put his arms around her...and more... during the very private golf lessons that usually took place on the very private nine hole golf course on her estate a few miles outside of New Orleans. She preferred her... activities ...to be outdoors. And very private. Allison had also learned early on that 'disposing' of a used conquest was best done in private, especially since she had an absolute horror of public displays of emotion.

Derek hadn't let a single opportunity slip by. And he had proven to be as good, even better at other...activities...as he was at golf. But over the past couple of weeks he'd become more demanding, flashes of jealousy piercing the debonair surface. When he'd grabbed her wrist a couple of days ago, angrily demanding that she stop flirting with another club member who had paused to talk with them had been the final straw.

Now the corners of Allison's lips turned up in a saucy way as she let her eyes speak for her. "Would you help me, Derek? I'm still having trouble with my back swing." She saw the instant response in the dark eyes. She laughed inside, waiting for him to come up behind her and put his arms around her, ostensibly to show her...yet again...how to hold the club properly.

"Guess you're gonna need quite a few more lessons," Derek murmured against Allison's ear. Taking her lightly by the shoulders, he pulled her back against him, nuzzling her cheek.

"Too bad it won't be you giving me those lessons...lover," Allison purred with exaggerated sweetness. The coldness of her smile matched the ice in her eyes as she prepared to put another greedy male in his place. The way he went suddenly still, his grip on her shoulders tightening told her she'd hit the bull's eye.

"What do you mean?" Derek let his hands slide lightly up over her shoulders, noting how creamy soft Allison's skin was, his hands caressing up and down the slender column of her neck before pausing on her shoulders again.

"It means no more private lessons, Sugarcakes," Allison snapped, throwing down the club and turning around to face him, not bothering to move out of his grasp.

"What are you saying...Allison?" Derek felt the muscles along his jaw tighten. 

"That means, _Mister_ Emerson," Allison corrected stiffly, "that you are no longer welcome on my property again." Easily as tall as the man watching her through narrowed eyes, she drew herself up to her full height, and met his gaze coldly. "We're finished." 

"Baby, you can't mean that..." Derek began, moving his hands up to cup her face. 

"No!" Allison spat the word as she pushed his hands away and stepped back. "Don't touch me! Don't you ever touch me again!"

"What did you say?" Derek said softly, his tone silken as he felt the rage boiling up inside, flooding his mind as he took a step toward her.

"I said...NO!" she screamed. "I sai..." It took a few seconds for Allison to realize that she was the source of the odd choking sound filling her ears. Frantically she clawed at the hands tightening around her neck.

--------------

Intimidation wasn't an attitude Al liked. It rarely worked on him, and he especially didn't like using it on other people. It was purely a power maneuver, but he knew that sometimes it was the only effective way to get an individual's attention off their situation at the moment long enough to get them moving, hopefully in the right direction. Past experience, as well as the look in Sam's eyes at the doctor's office, had told the Observer instantly that it was the only thing that would get through the anxious indecisiveness he'd seen rising in those green eyes. Sam's instant defensive response to that first seemingly cold reply had also delved deep, retrieving a memory Al had thought he'd buried so carefully decades ago. As much as he'd hated resurrecting it, that moment of ugliness in his life had been the razor edge needed to cut through the fear wrapping tighter and tighter around his friend's mind.

He'd barely finished delivering that stinging cut and felt a spark of relief at Sam's response, when Gooshie's urgent voice had filled the Imaging Chamber. 

"Admiral!" Gooshie's voice bounced off the walls of Imaging Chamber like an echo. "Mr. Emerson's brainwaves are rising at an alarming rate!" 

Al hadn't thought twice. "Center me on him, Gooshie! Now!" It had taken a few seconds for the lock with Derek's brainwaves to sync with his, but as the scene before him sharpened, Al realized what he was seeing. His guts begin to tighten as somewhere in the deepest part of his memory where it had simmered for decades, the black rage that hadn't emerged since...a night in a blinding deluge in a stinking jungle ...erupted again.

"GET AWAY FROM HER, YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Al shouted. Forgetting that he was in the Imaging Chamber, he lunged forward, thrashing his arms as if he could grab Derek and drag him away from the terrified young woman choking on her own screams.

But the Observer's angry shouts were nothing more than whispers lost in the ceaselessly shifting currents of time. All he could do was watch helplessly as Derek used Allison's frantic struggles to his own advantage. Watched as he spun her around and with the ease of experience gave her head a single sharp twist. The sound of bones snapping was unmistakable.


	9. Chapter 9

**Walking With Achilles** by C. Eleiece Krawiec

Chapter 8

Sam spent the balance of the day at the house. A half hour soak in a warm bath helped ease some of his stiffness. To avoid the temptation to curl up on the bed for even five minutes, he dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved flowered pullover then began slowly tidying the house. 

Deliberately taking his time, Sam was rewarded as the gentle exercise gradually helped to lessen the dull ache in his head. It also gave him the opportunity to get to know his host a little better.

Pausing while dusting in the living room, he picked up the only framed picture in the room, Tommie and Derek's wedding picture. He smiled at the genuine joy he saw in Tommie's radiant face delicately framed by her lace veil. Derek's smile never quite reached his eyes. Recalling something he'd learned as a kid, Sam placed his hand over the faces in the picture so that only the couple's eyes were showing.

_"The eyes are the mirrors of the soul"_ was one of his mother's favorite sayings. _"If you're looking at a someone, extend your arm and turn your hand so that only the eyes of the person you're looking at are exposed. Or if it's a picture, cover it so only the eyes are showing. By blocking out all of a person's face except for the eyes,"_ she'd explained, "_the eyes become the focal point.  
_

_A smile can be deceiving, but the eyes never lie. When only a person's eyes are revealed you can see in them if the smile on the their lips reaches their eyes. If the smile is in their eyes, the smile on their lips is genuine. But if their eyes are emotionless, even if they're laughing, be watchful." _

Now he saw how Tommie's blue eyes sparkled, reflecting her joyful smile, as the eyes of a bride should. Shifting his gaze to Derek, Sam shivered as he looked at the dark eyes that glittered like those of a snake focused on it's prey.

The phone rang, startling Sam and he narrowly avoiding dropping the crystal framed picture. Setting it down carefully, he picked up the phone. "Hello?" 

Derek's voice lunged at him through the receiver. "Where the hell have you been? Mr. Groves just called me asking where you were. If you lose this job, Tommie, so help me..."

"I couldn't go to work looking...like this," Sam said defensively. "Hell, I was so dizzy the driver had to help me into the cab."

"What did you need a cab for?"

The simple question made Sam's skin crawl. "I...I went to the doctor," he said, sinking down on the couch, his knees suddenly weak.

"What for? What did you tell him?"

Another simple question, but it, too was asked too quietly. Sam felt another shiver run through his body. The shiver became trembling when Derek shouted into the phone, his tone even uglier. "Dammit, Tommie, what did you tell him!"

When Al's voice spoke directly behind him at nearly the same instant, Sam jumped up and spun around, his heart thudding against his ribs. Then, in the next instant the dizziness and the pounding in his head increased and he wobbled then collapsed on the couch again.

Al had seen Sam scared, hurt, confused in previous leaps, but never gripped by the fearful uncertainty he saw now. He glanced at the handlink, then ignored it, and spoke as a survivor of the ugliness of humanity's inhumanity upon it's own.

"If you cave in now, this will be your last leap," The Observer said bluntly. "That's right," he continued as Sam's eyes widened. "If you let him intimidate you now, you won't survive this leap, because that bastard will have won the battle of wills. I saw too much of it in Vietnam, Sam. I know from first hand experience that when you give up, when you stop trying, you lose."

Even holding the receiver a few inches from his ear, Sam could hear Derek's angry shouting but continued to focus on the hologram. "But he's..." 

Al cut him off. "But nothing! You've never been a quitter, Sam. I've seen you in some awful situations before this, and not once did quitting ever cross your mind. Don't cross that line, now."

The pressure in Sam's head was thundering, aggravating the pain of the concussion as he felt himself torn between his fear of Derek and knowing the Observer was right. Still..."He frightens me," he admitted.

It was the first encouraging sign Al had seen since the doctor's office. "Okay," he said, coming around the couch, "you're afraid. Half the battle of overcoming fear is admitting it. But you can't stop there. "You've gotta get your mind off your fear and onto something else."

"Like what?" 

"Put those Nobel-prize winning brains to work! Start theorizing about how to get the goods on that bastard so that he gets locked away for so long that the world forgets he ever existed."

A long minute passed, the only sound being Derek's screaming coming through the telephone. Finally Sam swallowed, and put the receiver to his ear again.

When Derek paused for a breath, Sam snapped, "When you can speak in a civil tone, call me back," and hung up the phone. In spite of feeling like he'd just hit an angry cobra with a stick, his standing up to Derek was a much needed booster shot of confidence. He smiled at Al.

"You look like a washed out ghost," Al said, grinning. "But it's good to hear some bite in your voice again."

Sam glanced at the feather duster in his hand, then tossed it aside. "Come on," he said, turning toward the kitchen. "I want a cup of tea." He settled for warm milk.

Al watched his friend moving around the kitchen preparing the milk. He wished he didn't have to put his best friend's just renewed confidence to such a heavy test so fast. But Sam had to know that he had already changed history - Allison Kent hadn't died in the original history.


	10. Chapter 10

**Walking With Achilles** by C. Eleiece Krawiec

CHAPTER 9

The plain milk had become hot cocoa. Sam had drunk almost half of it when Al decided that he'd better go ahead and tell him about Allison. He didn't relish the thought, but Sam had to know. Watching his friend take another swallow, Al said, "You've changed history." He paused, glancing unnecessarily at the handlink then back to Sam.

The time traveler swallowed the last of the cocoa slowly. In the years of his leaping, Sam had learned to recognize the many nuances of the Observer's voice. He knew this one far too well. "How?" he asked, getting up from the table to take his cup to the sink. Rinsing it, he left it in the sink and turned back to Al. He couldn't help the shiver than ran down his back as he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the counter.

The sound of a car roaring into the driveway and screeching to a halt, followed by a car door slamming, put an end to their conversation. Before either of them could react, the front door was kicked open so hard Sam felt the vibration in his feet.

"TOMMIE!" Derek bellowed.

Sam knew he had only seconds before Tommie's husband would be in the kitchen.

Quickly he scanned the kitchen, looking for something to use to defend himself.

"Sam!" Al said urgently, pointing. "Check the drawers."

Sam's gaze followed where Al was pointing, and he yanked open the top drawer.

Seeing only dishtowels and such, he slammed it shut and yanked open the second drawer. Frantically, he fumbled through the serving spoons and spatulas. _God please..._ A particular shape caught his eye and as he dug for it, the kitchen door was kicked open.

Al watched as the furious man grabbed the chair Sam had been sitting in and flung it aside, then threw the kitchen table aside. "Sam! Behind you!"

As his fingers closed around the broad dark handle of the carving knife, Sam snatched it out and whirled around, just as Derek flung the table aside. He felt his body assume a defensive posture..._ probably from one of those martial arts Al's always telling me I'm a master at_...and he held the knife defensively before him. "Back off," Sam shouted. "Or..."

"Or you'll what?" Derek demanded, more surprised than intimidated by the sight of the knife in his wife's hand. He lunged forward, grabbing for Tommie. It was the wrong thing to do.

Instinctively, Sam parried the knife upward, carving a neat slice across Derek's palm. He ignored his medical training, ignored Derek's scream of pain and the blood spurting from his hand. Sam also noticed that the attack had done its work--the intense pain had deflated Derek's temper, at least somewhat.

"Gawd, Tommie," Derek whined as he grabbed a dishtowel from the counter and wrapped it around his hand. "How could you do this? You're my wife, remember?"

"As far as I'm concerned," Sam replied with the first real sharpness in his voice since this leap began. "Your rights as my husband ended the first time you hit me. And this morning..." Sam hesitated for a second as the terror of those first leap-in minutes flashed through his mind. "This morning just carved it in marble."

"Rights?" Derek questioned, still holding his injured hand wrapped in the blood-soaked dishtowel against his chest. He didn't like the tone that Tommie was using. It smacked very much of the rich bitches he had to cater to on his job. Once more his temper began to rise.

"What about my rights to some respect and civility?" he demanded, the anger coloring his words almost a tangible thing. "What about my right to be treated as an equal and not looked down on like I was a ditch digger?" He glanced down at his injured hand then back to Sam. "What about my right to be able to come into my own home and not worry about being attacked by my wife with a kitchen knife?"

"Don't take your eyes off him, Sam," Al warned. "If he gets his hands you..." he didn't have to finish the thought. Sam's brief nod told him he agreed.

"You," Sam emphasized the word, "attacked me! I've got a right..."

"Your... rights," Derek spat the word as if it were something vile, "are to do what your vows say. Remember: Love...honor... and..._obey_?"

Sam moved further away from Derek, circling around him. "Not in this lifetime," Sam replied bluntly. "The only thing obedience is going to get me, is killed."

"Don't give him any ideas, Sam," Al said sharply. "The only thing that's keeping him from coming after you right now is that cut on his palm." Checking the handlink quickly, he added, "You're gonna have to get him to the hospital. It's gonna take nineteen stitches to close that cut."

"He can drive himself," Sam snapped. "The only way I'll get in a car with him is if I'm driving and he's in the trunk!"

Seeing Tommie having a conversation with an open space of air beside her diffused her husband's anger momentarily. "Who the hell are you talking to?" Derek demanded.

"My invisible friend from the future," Sam snapped the first thing that came to mind. "And he says that you need stitches."

Derek's eyes narrowed. "Did you take your medication today, Tommie?"

Sam glanced at the Observer, already punching keys on the handlink. "Uh..."

"Answer me, Tommie," the authority in Derek's tone again asserting itself. "Did you take your medicine?"


	11. Chapter 11

**Walking With Achilles** by C. Eleiece Krawiec

Chapter 10

For almost two hours after Al ran out, Verbena had knelt, then sat on the floor of the Waiting Room, talking in soothing, reassuring tones before the battered woman wearing Sam's aura had stopped crying. It had taken another forty-five minutes before she allowed the psychiatrist to touch her and then she'd clung to Verbena, cowering against her; she was still shaking almost as violently as when she'd first appeared.

"Ziggy?" Verbena said very softly.

"Yes, Doctor Beeks?" the computer's voice was equally hushed.

"Have one of the female nurses bring me a syringe with one milligram of Valium," Verbena said quietly.

Remembering a time from her own childhood when she'd been badly frightened, Verbena did what her mother had done to calm and reassure her. Moving slowly so as not to alarm the new visitor, she shifted her arms a bit, cradling the young woman against her. Then she began to gently rock, softly humming one of the lullabies that her mother had sung to her. Another twenty minutes passed before Tommie finally was quiet, her soft steady breathing letting Verbena know she had finally relaxed into sleep.

"Doctor Beeks, do you require anything else?"

Verbena was about to say no, when something occurred to her, and she glanced down at the young woman nestled against her. "Yes. I want a secure cover put over the table in here. I don't think she can handle seeing the reflection."

Twenty minutes later Verbena was standing beside the solitary bed in the Waiting Room, studying the battered young woman now sleeping fitfully, aided by the shot of Valium.

She also kept a watchful eye on the two male technicians working on the reflecting tabletop, but they weren't just covering it. Dr. Beeks had changed her mind, and had ordered the table to be removed entirely from the room; a slightly smaller, ordinary table had been brought in to replace it temporarily. As ordered, the men worked in silence; the loudest sound in the Waiting Room was the soft 'whoosh' when the doors opened and closed.

When the technicians signaled that they were finished, Verbena nodded, watching them leave. She stayed with the battered visitor a few more minutes, making sure Tommie was sleeping quietly, then made her exit.

-------------------------------------

Back at the Emerson house

-------------------------------------

Shifting his position slightly so he was facing Derek, but still see Al's face without turning his head, Sam said hesitantly, "I...uh...I don't ...remember."

"We can't tell," Al said, slapping the handlink. "Gooshie says that Verbena's just barely got Tommie calmed down with..." he looked closely at the small display. "..uh, oh geez Louise!" He shot a 'you-aren't-gonna- like-this' glance at Sam. "He says that Verbena just gave her a shot of Valium, and she's sleeping."

Seeing his wife's eyes repeatedly darting to an area of thin air slightly to his right, Derek came to his own conclusion. Turning away, he walked out of the room but returned a moment later, a prescription bottle in his uninjured hand. Taking heed of the knife his wife still held warningly in front of herself, Derek walked slowly toward her. Stopping about six feet away, he held out the bottle and ordered, "Here. Take your pill." He started to move forward to hand the bottle to Sam, but stopped when his wife's posture became even more defensive.

"Throw it to me," Sam said sharply, deftly catching the small bottle Derek tossed to him. He watched Derek turn around and take a glass from one of the cupboards above the counter, then fill it from the faucet. When he turned back to face Sam, he seemed surprised that his wife hadn't moved.

"Tommie, you know what Dr. Gleason said," Derek said in a quiet, yet distinctly impatient tone. When she didn't respond, he went on. "If you don't take your medicine like you're supposed to, you'll wind up back on the third floor at Charity...again. " He watched his wife watching him for a moment, the held out the glass of water.

Al was ahead of Sam, punching buttons on the handlink so hard his fingers hurt. "Umm...okay, let's see...oh geez," he muttered. Looking up at Sam he said, "That's the psychiatric unit at Charity Hospital." He punched more buttons. "Ziggy tapped into Tommie's medical records. Seems she's been a 'guest' there on four different occasions in the last five years." Seeing the slight frown furrowing his friend's forehead, Al said, "Tommie was diagnosed about five years ago with moderate depression. According to her records, she also suffers from occasional bouts of severe anxiety. Which is why her psychiatrist, Dr. Norman Gleason, prescribed Lithium..." he pointed at the bottle in Sam's hand, "for her." Quickly he punched in another query on the handlink. "She's been on it for the last five years."

Sam shot a desperate look at Al that said almost as plainly as words, I can't take this. The Observer read his friend's eyes immediately.

"Palm the pill, Sam," Al said. When he saw Sam's confusion, he said, "Okay, never mind that. Take a pill out of the bottle, but when you set it down, miss the counter so it falls on the floor. Then, while slimeball's attention is diverted, drop the pill in the sink, drink the water and pour the rest out to wash the pill down the drain." A small part of Al's mind thought it was silly to have to spell out such an obvious diversion. But the street-wise part of himself knew that Sam wasn't used to dealing with someone like Derek, and right now his friend needed his full attention on the injured man watching him with the intensity of a snake focused on prey.

The ploy worked. The pill bottle hit the floor near Sam's feet, scattering the pills wildly, and Derek jumped almost reflexively as if to avoid being touched by the flying medication. The instant Derek's attention was diverted, Sam dropped the pill down the drain, swallowed half the water in the glass and poured the rest in the sink. Setting the glass on the counter with a thump, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and demanded, "There. You satisfied?"

Standing in the kitchen doorway, Derek watched his wife, his anger plain. When he spoke, it wasn't to reply to Sam. "Pick this stuff up, then get your purse."

"What for?" Sam asked suspiciously, never breaking eye contact with Derek.

"Unless you want me to call the cops and tell them you attacked me with a knife," Derek spat, "you're gonna drive me to the hospital. You're invisible friend..." he said derisively, "is probably right about me needing stitches." He glanced down at the blood-soaked dishtowel wrapped around his hand, wincing as his hand throbbed even harder, then back to his wife. "Pick up your medicine," he said sharply, "it's too damned expensive to waste. And be quick about it. I'll wait in the car," he said darkly, then turned and stalked out of the house. Only when the front door slammed shut did Sam allow himself to relax.

The knife clattered to the floor as Sam closed his eyes and sagged against the counter. His heart pounded in his chest and his hands trembled as he took a long shaky breath. Opening his eyes, Sam held his hands out and watched them shake, then looked at Al who had moved closer to him.

"That's the adrenaline pouring into your system," he explained unnecessarily. "Right now you've got so much of it in you, you could probably punch a hole in the wall and never feel it." Al didn't give Sam a chance to voice the uncertainty he saw in his friend's eyes.

"Do what he said, Sam," he ordered firmly. "Pick up Tommie's medicine, and then get him to the hospital." Again Al replied to the question he sensed Sam was about to speak, keeping his voice calm, his tone firm.

"I'll be with you the whole time, Sam," he assured his friend. After a moment he urged, "Come on, pick up the pills and get out to the car. Ziggy's got directions to a hospital near here."

After spending nearly three hours in a crowded emergency room, Sam's head was pounding again and his nerves were on a razor's edge. He'd had to sit beside Derek the entire time until he was taken in for treatment.

At one point Derek sighed. Without asking, he had leaned his head against Sam's shoulder and closed his eyes, his pain evident in the drawn, paleness of his face. It wasn't a threatening gesture, but even so, Sam couldn't relax until he heard a nurse call, "Derek Emerson," and watched Tommie's husband get up. But the tension grabbed him again, when Derek glanced down at him and said, "Come with me?"

Sam and Al both blinked twice, surprised by the hint of fear in Derek's voice. And, though he wanted to flee from him, something in the time traveler recognized the thread of fear in the quiet question as one learned early in Derek's life. "Sure." He had even managed a hesitant smile as he stood up, and followed Derek and the nurse.

It seemed odd that during the time it took for the doctor to clean and then put the nineteen stitches in Derek's hand that Al had said it would take, that he felt himself relax. Even more startling though, was what happened when the ER doctor had picked up the needle and suture to begin closing the ugly wound.

Sam had caught his breath when Derek had turned to him as he stood beside him and hid his face against Sam's shoulder. Even as he felt Derek's good hand fumble for then hold tightly to one of his hands, Sam felt the quiver run through the other man's body. The revelation in that instant ... _he's afraid of needles_... pushed away the anxiety.

In that moment as he watched the doctor put in the first stitch, it didn't occur to Sam to feel uncomfortable or odd when he brought his free hand up and smoothed it soothingly over Derek hair. All he focused on at that moment was comforting Tommie's husband, someone who had turned to him for strength. In spite of knowing what Derek was capable of and had done, Sam couldn't have denied the trembling man the comfort of his understanding of his fear, even if it had occurred to him.

The drive home was uneventful, due mainly to the fact that the shot Derek had been given for pain had almost put him to sleep. Sam was thankful for the cover of the fading evening light as he practically carried Derek into the house, then got him upstairs and into bed.

Throughout the time in the emergency room and back to the house, Al had stayed within ten feet of Sam the whole time. Now he watched as Sam double-checked Derek to be sure he was sleeping quietly. He waited while Sam got a blanket and pillow and went downstairs to curl up on the couch. What did surprise him, was that Sam, obviously exhausted, didn't stretch out immediately and go to sleep.

"I can't," Sam said tiredly. Tucking the blanket over his legs, he glanced up at the Observer. "Remember, the doctor said I couldn't go to sleep until after nine p.m." He looked at the clock sitting on top of the television. "I've got another hour and a half."

Al had waited that hour and a half with Sam. They had made small talk, even watching the local news that came on at nine. A couple of times, to save Sam the exertion, he'd popped in to check on Derek. The last time he checked, when he re-centered on Sam, he was relieved to see his friend stretched out on the couch, fast asleep.

Al lingered another five minutes. Then, satisfied that Sam was safe and Derek zonked out due to the pain medicine, he quietly opened the door to the Imaging Chamber and left.


	12. Chapter 12

**Walking With Achilles** by C. Eleiece Krawiec

Chapter 11

Having a retarded little sister, Al had quickly learned how to fight to defend her when some of the neighborhood kids would tease and pick on her. Often when the teasing was subtle, Trudy would just laugh along with her tormentors, not understanding their cruelty or why her big 'bruver' got so mad. But on the few occasions when the cruel words managed to filter through the cloudiness of her mind, he'd seen her cry as if her heart were breaking because she couldn't understand why she was being hurt. And always, before the first tears had trickled down Trudy's plump cheeks, the skinny little Italian boy with smouldering dark eyes would jump to her defense.

But the time Al would never forget happened one July evening the summer he turned seven. It was the night that his Calavicci temper was well and fully roused for the first time. He learned his first lesson that night of what it meant to fight for those unable to defend themselves, without hesitation or thought for what might happen to him.

After supper that evening, Al and Trudy had gone outside to play for a while before it was time for baths and bed. When a firefly lit up in front of her face, Trudy had squealed delightedly. His own childish laughter mingled with hers as he tried to teach her how to catch the fireflies just beginning to dot the dusky purplish sky of early twilight.

He had enjoying chasing the fireflies almost as much as Trudy. So much so, that when he ran toward the corner after a particularly elusive firefly, he hadn't seen the shadows cast on the sidewalk by the streetlight at the corner. Shadows of figures hiding behind the big bush near the corner of the O'Briens' house. Shadows of trouble spoiling for a place to happen. And, just as Al had cupped his hands and caught the elusive firefly, twelve year old Jack Rontinelli, his younger brother, Philo, and four or five other boys surged out and ambushed him. They had dragged him into a narrow alley nearby and beat him up. But that hadn't been enough.

A couple of the boys dragged him to the opening of the alley and held him, forcing him to watch while Jack and Philo had picked on Trudy, poking at her, teasing, and repeatedly pushing her down.

When he heard Trudy's first wail, seven-year-old Albert had struggled even harder, bucking and twisting and kicking. Once he bit down hard on the hand that had been clamped over his mouth to muffle his angry shouts.

It seemed like Trudy's frightened wails had filled the evening air forever when he at last heard a screen door slam close by. Then an angry adult male voice...Mr. O'Brien's voice ... shouted, "What's goin' on out here?" Then, "Stop that, you misbegotten pack of hooligans! Stop it or they'll hear ye in Dublin before I'm finished with ye!" 

More screen doors slammed in the warm summer evening as more of the neighbors came outside to investigate the commotion. Jack abruptly fled into the darkness. The boys hanging onto Al dropped him like a hot potato and ran. Jack's mean laughter filled the air as he and his cronies made their escape. All except Philo.

By the time Nick Calavicci had coming tearing out into the yard to see what the commotion was about, Albert, his nose bleeding and his left eye already sporting the start of a shiner, had tackled Philo and had the older boy on the ground. Nick had to dodge his son's flying fists as young Albert continued to land punches on any part of Philo's body that he could reach.

"Bastardo!" Albert had shrieked as his father pulled him off of the now blubbering and bloodied Philo Rontinelli, who was in the beefy grip of Mr. O'Brien.

"Albert!" Nick said sharply, setting his son down abruptly. "Mind your mouth!"

The coarse Italian swear words that Albert spat at Philo earned him two stinging swats on the seat of his pants; he barely felt them. He was about to spit more curses when his father's voice spoke above him.

"Not another word, Albert, or you and I will be going down to the basement tonight," Nick warned. The eyes of the father, like those of the son, spoke volumes.

Albert knew what that meant. It wasn't a threat; it was a promise. He could almost feel the sting of Papa's belt across his behind as he considered the familiar warning. Glancing around, he saw his mother leading Trudy inside. After another minute, he grudgingly swallowed the words, settling for the meanest glare he could muster, letting his eyes burn as he stared the other...older...boy into fidgeting.

Half an hour later, cleaned up and his scrapes attended to, he crawled, exhausted, into bed. He looked up when his father came into his room and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"You know I don't approve of you fighting, mio."

"Yes, Papa," Albert said quietly. He wasn't sure about Papa's tone of voice. It could mean another lecture about fighting. Or it could mean that he was going to get a spanking tonight, anyway, even though he had obeyed.

Then, he felt his heart swell when he heard his father say softly, "But I am also very proud of you for standing up for your sister."

Nick stroked a couple of wayward curls off his son's forehead. "Don't ever go looking for fights, Albert," he said. "But don't be afraid to fight when you have to."

"Yes, Papa," he said with a wide smile as he felt his father's kiss on his forehead. "I'll remember."

Turning his face slightly, Albert brushed a kiss against his father's unshaven cheek. "Good night, Papa." Settling back into his pillow, the little boy, who would one day be a high ranking Admiral who would defend and fight for a friend with the same selflessness as he had for his sister, closed his eyes and fell into an exhausted sleep.

Nick Calavicci watched his son sleep for a few minutes, then leaned down to touch another kiss on Albert's dark curls. "Sogni d'oro, mio piccolo uomo," ("Sweet dreams, my little man") he whispered softly, then got up and quietly left the room.

A little more than sixty years later, as Al finally walked out of the Imaging Chamber his physical exhaustion reminded him of that fight on that summer night so long ago; only now, the adrenaline was still running at full surge. Though physically tired, the Observer was mentally and emotionally psyched up, having spent the last six hours being Sam's "ace in the hole" and morale booster -- coaching, guarding and backing up his friend during the tense confrontation when Derek had slammed into the house twenty minutes after Sam had hung up on him. That had been followed by the more than three hours he stayed with Sam and Derek at the hospital. And finally, the silent trip back to the house, and waiting until Sam at last fell asleep on the couch. 

Now he dropped the handlink on the control panel near Gooshie, and headed for the door. "I'm gonna get some coffee," he said, and was gone.

In the hall Verbena had to sidestep when the Control Room door opened, narrowly avoiding running into Al, literally. Seeing his intense expression, she immediately fell into step beside him.

Al never broke his stride. "Whatever it is, it can wait," he said abruptly.

Over the years the Project's chief psychiatrist had gotten used to checking Al's pulse on the move. "Don't!" she warned when the Observer started to shake her hand off. By the time the elevator doors closed a minute later, her fingers still firmly on the pulse in his wrist, she had confirmation of her suspicion.

"Your pulse is doing the jitterbug," she said, unruffled when her patient snatched his arm away. "The last thing you need right now is that 'rocket fuel' the cafeteria serves."

"Tough," Al snapped. The elevator doors were barely open on the eleventh floor when he slipped between them, moving quickly down the hall. He was already in the cafeteria and pouring his coffee when Verbena ran in. Giving her a defiant glance he took a long sip. Sputtering, he barely managed to swallow the too hot brew without spewing it all over.

"Serves you right," Verbena said unsympathetically. Taking the cup from him, she poured it out in the nearest trash bin before the Observer could say anything.

Getting a cup of water from the bottled water dispenser, Al took several swallows, letting the cool liquid soothe his burned tongue and throat. Refilling his cup, he sat down at the nearest table. Putting his elbows on the table, he dropped his face into his hands, and let out a prolonged sigh. His shoulders drooped a bit, the only sign that a tiny bit of the pent up tension had been released.

Verbena sat down across from him. "What took so long?"

Without lifting his head, Al said, "What do you want first? The good news or the bad news?"

The psychiatrist settled on the former. "The good news. How's Sam?" she asked.

"Okay," Al said, straightening up with a weary sigh. "The good news. Sam's okay. Right now he's asleep on the couch." Arching his back slightly to work out a little of the stiffness, the Observer then closed his eyes as he slowly rolled his head. "Considering what he's been through the last six hours, I'm surprised he didn't collapse at the hospital."

"What?" Verbena demanded, her full attention triggered by the words "collapse" and... "Hospital? Al, what happened?" When he didn't respond instantly to her question, she demanded again, "What happened?"

"We were at the house, in the kitchen, and..."

"And...what?" concern sharpened her tone, crowding him impatiently.

Al shot a look at her that said 'Gimme-a-chance-and-I'll-tell-you-what-happened'.

"I'm sorry," Verbena apologized. "Go ahead."

Getting to his feet, the Observer went to the soft drink machine next to the coffee counter. He considered getting a Coke, but as the last coin dropped, he punched the button for a fruit punch drink. Popping the tab, he took a long swallow then went back to the table. Sitting down, he saw the approval in Verbena's eyes.

"Don't push it," he warned softly then took another swallow. "I almost got the Coke. But," he glanced at the cold drink before meeting her gaze again. "I figured you'd probably toss it in the trash, too." 

"You're right," she agreed.

Al studied her for a moment. "It's a good thing we're friends, otherwise I'd have matched you best two out of three for the Coke." Lifting the can to take another swallow, he paused. "And I would've won, too." 

Verbena chuckled, as she watched him chug down the rest of the punch. "That's what my older brother, Hamilton, always thought, too." She grinned a bit wider at his look of mild surprise. But her focus shifted back to Sam when Al began to speak again.

"Like I said," Al began again, "Sam and I were in the kitchen when Derek kicked in the front door, screaming for Tommie." He kept his eyes on hers as he continued.

"Sam was standing by the counter," he said, "and a damned good thing, too. He found a carving knife in one of the drawers.."

"What!" Verbena gasped.

Al nodded. "That psychotic bastard stormed into the kitchen, and started tossing the table and chairs around so he could get to Sam. If Sam hadn't had that knife.." he drew a slow, shuddering breath.

"What happened?" It seemed to Verbena that she'd asked that question at least six times in the last ten minutes. 

Al shrugged. "When he lunged to grab the knife, Sam swiped him with it."

Again he nodded at Verbena's expression. "Laid the palm of his left hand wide open. That's the primary reason I was in the Imaging Chamber so long. We spent almost four hours at the Emergency Room waiting to get that bum's hand sewed up. Ziggy was right. It took nineteen stitches to close it." He paused to take another deep, slow breath. "Then, when we got back to the house..."

"What about Derek?" Verbena interrupted.

"No problem," he told her. "The shot they gave him for pain turned his lights out. He was knocked out like a rat the last time I checked on him. No," Al said, his lip curling derisively, " Mr. Emerson, will probably be circling the moon until at least noon tomorrow, if not longer."

Picking up the empty soft drink can, Al rolled it slowly between his hands. "Then I stayed another hour and half till Sam could go to sleep."

"He was that wound up?"

Al shook his head. "Yes and no. When he went to the doctor this morning, he had a mild concussion thanks to that maniac. Anyway, Tommie's doctor told him not go to sleep until at least nine p.m. Then, when you add that to the showdown in the kitchen and then the trip to the hospital..." He paused, shaking his head slowly as he saw Sam again, in his mind's eye, when he'd finally dropped onto the couch. "The kid was running on fumes by the time we got back to the house. But," he sighed softly as he got up to put the empty drink can in a recycle bin

beside the drink machine. "You know 'Mr-Do-It-By-The-Rules'. It was closer to nine thirty when I checked on Derek the last time. By the time I got back to Sam, he had finally fallen asleep." Dropping back down in his chair, Al met Verbena's eyes. "And that brings us back to the moment."

After a minute or so of silence, Verbena asked quietly, "And the bad news?" Seeing the way the line of Al's jaw tightened, she steeled herself to hear the worst.

The Observer didn't try to blunt his reply, maintaining unwavering eye contact with Verbena. 

"When Gooshie centered me on Derek after telling me his brain waves were going wild, I had to stand there and watch that bastard kill another woman." He nodded when the psychiatrist gasped. "He snapped her neck like a dry twig."

"Who was she?" 

"According to the information Ziggy came up with when calculating Derek's coordinates, she was a very spoiled, very wealthy member of the New Orleans upper crust."

"How did it happen? Where?" Before Al could answer further, Ziggy joined the conversation.

"Allison Kent, age twenty-six was killed April 7, 1987 on the small private golf course on her estate just outside of New Orleans."

"You mean murdered..." Verbena began.

"No, Doctor Beeks, I mean killed," Ziggy corrected.

A fresh surge of adrenaline sent the Observer's temper soaring for the boiling point. "I don't know what happened before I got there," Al snapped sharply, "but I was there! I watched him kill her! She was murdered..." He, too was cut off.

"The official cause of death listed on Miss Kent's death certificate was animal attack." Psychiatrist and Observer both stared upward, their expressions surprised.

"Would you mind explaining how they came up with that?" Al demanded.

"According to an article printed in the local paper on April 10, 1987," Ziggy continued, "..."the severely mutilated body of wealthy young socialite, Allison Kent was found in the water near the bank of the Petit Lis Bayou that ran across the back of her estate."

"You mean that little creek?" Al asked.

"Not creek, Admiral," Ziggy corrected. "In Louisiana such a body of water is called a "bayou". And to answer your question, yes, that is where the body was discovered."

"What kind of wild animal..." Verbena began.

"Alligator," Ziggy finished for her. "They are common in Louisiana, though they tend to stay away from habitated areas. Attacks on humans are not common, but they are known to happen."

"What did the autopsy show?" Al asked.

"Very little. According to the medical examiner's records, the left side of her upper body and most of her face were destroyed in the attack."

The Observer's face darkened as Ziggy's words made only one conclusion possible. "He must've thrown her body in the water after I left to find Sam," he said. "The perfect cover. With most of her upper body and face destroyed, any broken bones..."

"...which would include a broken neck..." Verbena added.

"...would be attributed to the attack," Al said bluntly. "Which lets him off scott free to go out and do it again."

"He's got to be stopped!" Verbena then added, her tone even more urgent, "You've got to tell Sam!"

"No shinola!" Al said sharply, his dark eyes almost forbidding as he stared back her. "And, for your information," he went on, a tinge of acid in his voice, "I was just about to tell Sam about it when Derek kicked in the door!" He took a quick breath then added, "This bastard is just what his wife said -- he's insane. "

"There are varying degrees of insanity..."

Slamming the palm of his hand down on the table, Al cut the psychiatrist off. "Verbena," he snapped. "The man's got a chip on his shoulder the size of Mt. Rushmore, and, considering what he's done.."

"Allegedly done..." Verbena began, then paused to take a quick breath. Judging by the look on Al's face, she was going to need it to steady her when the blast came. She figured about five seconds; it came in three.

Rising from his seat, Al leaned slightly across the table and stared into the eyes of the handsome black woman. "Don't give me that psychiatric, legalist double talk, doctor!" he snapped vehemently. "I know what I saw!" He leaned a bit closer, almost nose to nose with her. Verbena, to her credit, didn't budge or even blink.

"I went into that Imaging Chamber a little over six hours ago, and had to stand there and watch that psychotic bastard very deliberately break Allison Kent's neck! And then watch him come stampeding into the house not too long after that, and get too damned close to getting his hands on Sam again! There was nothing alleged about either incident!" Pulling back, he sat down again and took a deep, slow breath, but his eyes never strayed from hers.

"For whatever reason," he said as calmly as he could though his dark eyes continued to flash. "That man hates women with a passion second to none." Al paused a second, then said firmly, his tone not as sharp but just as resolute. "I'm telling you, Doctor Beeks," he retreated momentarily into formality, "that nitroglycerin is more stable than Derek Emerson."

A less confident person, male or female, would have wilted under Al's authoritative and vehement point of view. But the Project's chief psychiatrist took it all in stride. By no stretch of the imagination was this the first time she had butted heads and swapped semantics with the Project's co-director and chief Observer.

They sat in silence for a couple minutes; it was Al who finally broke it. His tone and manner were decidedly calmer, but there was no apology in his eyes or on his lips as he met Verbena's patient gaze. He didn't realize that his passionate outburst had revealed more of the very private side of himself to the psychiatrist than he would have been comfortable knowing.

"Ziggy told me you sedated Tommie," he began. "How's she doing?" He took a sip of water, watching her.

"Considering what she went through just before Sam leaped into her, she's doing good," Verbena replied. "I gave her two c.c.s of Valium to calm her down and, at the moment she's sleeping quietly. I've got one of the female nurses sitting with her."

Folding her arms on the table top she studied the Observer as she told him what all she'd done, including the removal of the reflective table, and how long it had taken to get Tommie to her present state of calm.

Focusing on and listening to the recitation from the psychiatrist, Al's impassioned attitude eased and gradually dissipated. As Verbena wound up the briefing, all he could do was shake his head wearily. When she finally finished, he sat quietly, looking into her eyes, studying her face.

"So, what can you do?" he asked.

"Well, when she wakes up, and after Dr. Sanderson checks her out," Verbena said. "I'm going to have a long talk with her." She studied Al's face a moment. "I can't let this leap end with her going back without knowing that she knows she doesn't have to stay with Derek. That she can have a life totally free and independent of him, and that she can survive without him."

Al pushed his luck. "Can I talk to her when she wakes up?" The look on Verbena's face was his answer. But still he pressed the point. "Look, at some time during this leap, and it's got to be sooner rather than later, I've got to spend a few minutes with her. You know that, Bena," he said, his voice firm but not harsh.

"I know," she said. "But not before I talk to her," the psychiatrist was quite firm about that point.

"Well, when will that be?"

Verbena studied the Observer's intense expression for a moment, noting just exactly how focused he was on her and whatever answer she would give. She understood his need for information from the leapee, but she also knew that for the time being, Tommie Emerson needed to be cared for very carefully. Even as she considered that, her thoughts went back several years to a cousin of hers who had gone through a similar situation; only Tonia's husband hadn't ever beaten her like Derek Emerson had his wife.

It had taken nearly a year of intensive sessions before Tonia had accepted that she didn't deserve the abuse. That she did, in fact, have the inner strength to have a life without her husband, and that she was quite capable of taking care of herself. But Verbena knew that she didn't have a year to counsel Tommie. In fact she wasn't sure that she had the week that Ziggy had predicted Sam had to prove and link Derek to the murders so he could leap. There were so many variables... Derek being the primary one...that could change things suddenly. Any unforeseen variable cropping up, would mean that the very real possibility existed that Sam could literally leap out of Tommie's life at any moment. No, she had to take whatever unknown span of time this leap would encompass to try and get through to the abused woman sleeping in the Waiting Room. Get through to her in such a way that she at least would have a fighting chance of getting away from Derek before she also became one of the victims of his unreasonable rage and hatred.

"Verbena?" The Observer's voice pierced her thoughtful reverie.

"Hmm?" she said, blinking as she focused on the man across the table from her. "What did you say?"

"How long before I can talk to Tommie?" Al repeated. "You okay? For a minute it looked like you'd checked out and didn't leave a forwarding address."

Verbena smiled sheepishly. "Let me spend an hour with her after she wakes up," Verbena responded firmly. "After that I'll let you come in and talk with her."

Al's expression became hopeful. "Does that mean she's awake?"

"It means that when she wakes up...of her own accord," she clarified. "I want to spend an hour with her before you so much as darken the doorway of the Waiting Room. Clear?"

Al sighed, but nodded, running a hand through his hair as he considered everything he and Verbena had just discussed ...and the possible consequences if something in this leap didn't 'give' pretty soon and swing it in Sam's favor. After a couple of minutes, he said aloud, "Ziggy, dig into Derek's background..."

"Already done, Admiral," Ziggy purred.

"Well don't be greedy!" he snapped. "Share the wealth!"

There was a distinctive 'pout' in the computer's voice as she said, "Ask me nicely." 

"Ziggy!" Al gritted warningly.

"That's better," the computer responded, almost cheerfully.

Al closed his eyes and slapped a hand to his forehead, muttering under his breath. He didn't even open his eyes, when he felt Verbena's hand on his. But when she said, a soft lilt of laughter in her voice, "You two play off each other so beautifully," and he fixed her with a beady-eyed stare, she just chuckled. "I call 'em as I see 'em."

"If you are ready..." Ziggy said loftily, interjecting herself into the conversation again.

"We're ready, Ziggy," Verbena said quickly, figuring by the look on Al's face that a less aggressive response would get the information recited more quickly and with a lot less verbal sparring.

All that Ziggy's recitation of facts did for Al was add to his gut-gnawing concern for Sam's safety. It also poured a fresh surge of adrenaline into his bloodstream, almost positively guaranteeing that he wasn't going to get to sleep for a good long while.


	13. Chapter 13

**Walking With Achilles** by C. Eleiece Krawiec

CHAPTER 12

Sam woke with a start, not sure what had stirred him from sleep. For a long moment he lay absolutely still before slowly opening his eyes. Panic set in when he couldn't seem to open them, and it only receded when he brought a hand up to touch his face, his fingers hesitant on the puffy flesh around his eyes. The sharp flicker of pain the touch caused brought it all back to him -- where he was, what had happened.

Early morning sunlight coming through the partially opened blinds over the window across from the couch striped the carpet. Even that small amount of light hurt Sam's eyes and he winced, shielding them with one hand as he stood up. Gasping as his stiff muscles protested being used, Sam moved toward the stairs leading to the second floor of the house; even the light exertion of climbing the stairs left him gasping softly.

Going into the bathroom he turned on the hot water in the tub, tempering it with the cold until it was just short of scalding. After a moment's hesitation he picked up a peach-colored bottle of bubblebath foam from the counter by the sink and measured two capfuls into the water. Then, though he would have preferred not to, Sam went down the hall to check on Derek.

Slowly and carefully he opened the bedroom door and padded quietly across to the bed. For a moment he stood looking down at Derek as he lay sleeping, curled on his left side and clad only in his shorts, his injured hand cradled against his chest. Studying the sleeping man, Sam had to admit that it was easy to see how a woman could be taken in by Derek's tanned, trim, muscular body and dark blond good looks.

_You and a coral snake have something in common _Sam thought as he scanned Derek's sleep-gentled face. _Nice to look at, but if a woman crosses you, you're just as lethal._ The thought sent a shiver through him and Sam very quietly left the bedroom, drawing the door shut with excruciating care.

Returning to the bathroom, he turned off the water, stripped and stepped into the tub and carefully lowered himself into the thick froth of floral scented bubbles. Leaning back in the tub, he rested his head on the small pink inflatable tub pillow shaped like a fleur-de-lis, and sighed audibly as the hot water closed over his body. In the next moment the Imaging Chamber door 'whooshed' open, and the look on Al's face when he saw his friend up to his neck in bubbles made Sam glad he had opted for the bubblebath.

"Always such a lovely sight," Al teased with a devilishly grin. "A lady in her bubblebath. What are you using?" He grinned even wider when Sam glanced almost reflexively at the sink. Turning, he saw the peach-colored bottle. Going over to it, the Observer leaned down a little and read from the label on the back of it.

"'Hawaiian Floral'." He glanced back at Sam who had sunk as low in the bubbles as he could without inhaling them, but didn't say anything, opting instead to turn back and read the rest of the label.

"Put two capfuls in your bath and then relax and let the romantic scents of white ginger and jasmine whisk you away to a lush Hawaiian garden and sooth away the cares of your busy day." Straightening up he went to stand by the tub, chuckling at the sight of Sam now eyelashes deep in the suds.

Lifting his chin out of the suds Sam said defensively, "It's all she had and I figured you'd show up sooner or later…probably while I was in the tub, and..." He let the look in his eyes finish the thought. Yet in spite of the roguish twinkle in the Observer's eyes, he saw something else too. "You're here kind of early, aren't you?" Sam asked.

Al caught the subtle change in Sam's voice and met his friend's eyes. "I figured it would give us a chance to talk without worrying about 'Mister Congeniality' interrupting us." He flicked a glance toward the closed bathroom door then back to Sam. "Where is he?"

"Still sleeping," Sam said quietly as he slipped down a little deeper in the tub, sighing as the hot water lapped higher under his chin. "You can't believe how good this feels," he murmured.

"After the beating you took yesterday, I don't doubt it," Al agreed, then couldn't help ribbing Sam a little more. "And your skin will be silky smooth to the touch, and the scent of ..." he stepped back to the counter to glance at the bottle of bubble bath, "...white ginger and jasmine will linger for hours." He just grinned when Sam flicked water and foam at him, watching as the froth passed through his image.

"You didn't get here this early to just razz me about taking a bubblebath," Sam said, changing the tone of the conversation abruptly as he sat up, careful to make sure that a thick layer of bubbles reached almost to his shoulders. "What have you got for me?" he asked, unaware of the anxious note in his voice as he looked up at Al.

In the space of a few seconds Al considered just how much of the facts to tell Sam. Too much and he had a feeling that Sam's rejuvenated confidence could slip. Too little and the leaper might unintentionally ignore some clue or sign and wind up... Al slammed on the brakes of his thoughts, veering sharply away from that path of consideration.

Highwire walkers in the circus had a long balance pole to help them maintain a straight, steady walk across a tautly stretched wire. Al, on the other hand, had only about three or four ounces of highly specialized, lightweight metal and sophisticated computer chips to help him walk the tightrope of figuring out how much information to give his best friend so he succeeded and survived this leap. Taking a breath, he pulled out the handlink.

But Sam saw the fleeting speculation in the Observer's eyes. "Al?" he said, drawing his friend's attention to him by just the tone in his voice. "What is it? And don't blow smoke..."

"How can I?" Al protested, shoving the handlink in his coat pocket and showing his hands to Sam. "See? No cigar"; but he'd been caught. Scanning his friend's bruised and battered face, and recalling how Tommie had looked when she'd arrived in the Waiting Room, Al knew he couldn't risk even the slightest undermining of Sam's confidence if he was caught trying to sugarcoat the information.

"It's not good," he said, keeping his tone even as he drew the handlink from his pocket again. He didn't look at the colorful communications device as he moved closer to the tub, squatting on his haunches to be at eye level with his friend. "In fact, you've already changed history," he began.

"But not for the better, right?" Sam asked, ignoring the uneasy flutters in his stomach. He didn't give Al any options other than... "Out with it, Al," he said firmly, watching the Observer closely. "Whatever it is, I can..."

Al cut in abruptly, deciding that the best way to give Sam what he was asking for was hard, fast and straight. "Before he came rampaging in here last night, Derek killed another woman." He hesitated then added as he held Sam's wide-eyed stare, "I watched him do it. Her name was Allison Kent and..."

"And what?"

Al took a deep breath and let it out. "And she didn't die in the original history," he said quietly. He hated the look that brought to Sam's eyes. "Apparently when you stood up to him, over the phone, he took it out on his current girlfriend..."

"He's married..." Sam started to protest, then stopped when Al gave him one of those looks. Then, "How did he kill her?"

"He broke her neck," Al answered almost as fast as Sam asked.

For a couple of minutes it was quiet in the bathroom; not even the handlink chirped to break the silence. Then Sam spoke again, his tone resolute as he once more looked into Al's eyes.

"Now give me all the information Ziggy came up with." He reinforced the last three words. "All of it." He watched as Al stood up and punched several buttons on the handlink.

"According to what Ziggy's found," Al began. "Derek Floyd Emerson, is twenty-seven years old. He was born February 1, 1960 in Gainesville, Georgia with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth." Glancing at Sam he added, "He was the only child of David Francis and Ellen Glennforth Emerson, and the only grandchild of Mckenzie and Lavinia Emerson. Both his parents' families were part of the 'old money' from that area." He paused, pressing the keys on the handlink to continue the information flow.

"Anyway, when Derek was six, his father died unexpectedly in an automobile accident." Al paused to take a puff of his cigar then continued. "Eventually, Ellen, met and fell in love, but the guy was out of her social class..." he paused again when he saw the pensive expression on his friend's face. "Sam, we don't have to do this right now."

"Yes, we do, Al," Sam said, his gaze steady as he looked up at the Observer. "I need every bit of information I can get and as fast as I can get it." He stopped short of telling Al that he had a feeling in the back of his mind, that 'something' was whispering to him that he was going to need it sooner rather than later. Much sooner. "Go on."

Al searched Sam's face for a moment before going on. "Like I was saying, Ellen married..."

"Out of her social class," Sam prompted. "And?"

"Well Ziggy found a couple of articles in one of the Gainesville newspapers. According to the 'Who's Who And What They're Doing' section...the gossip section for the upper crust...," Al said. "When she became engaged to the guy, Old man Glennforth and his wife threatened to cut not only Ellen out of not only their wills but also their lives.

And that included their grandson."

That bit of information took Sam by surprise. "Their own grandchild?" he said, shocked at the thought.

The Observer just nodded. "Apparently the old man thought more of social standing than he did of his daughter's happiness. But, Ellen turned out to have inherited more than money; she was also just as stubborn as her father. And," Al concluded, "The day after she married her second husband, her parents not only wrote a completely new will, cutting her and their grandson totally out of their will, denying Ellen her rightful inheritance which, in turn, would have been handed down to Derek, but they disowned her, too."

"Where's his mother now?" Sam asked. "Maybe I could call her. She might be able to tell me..."

"Not possible," Al said. "Ellen Emerson Taylor died eight years ago."

"What about her husband?"

As he had given Sam the information about Derek's family, the more he read, the more grateful Al became for his own childhood.

"Derek and his step-father's relationship, if you could call it that, was barely civil by the time Derek left for college." As the last bit of information scrolled across the handlink's tiny screen, he said soberly, "They haven't spoken since the day Ellen was buried."

Sam lay in the hot, relaxing bath, silently comparing what he'd just heard to his own childhood, his family. To him, trying to understand why people would allow pride and social standing to destroy their family was almost unfathomable. Sadly, one of the lessons brought home hard and cold to him in his years of leaping, was to experience firsthand the fact that life wasn't fair. It seemed strange, in a sad way, that as he listened to Al reciting the few facts they had about Derek's family, Sam found himself feeling sorry for the man.

After a moment's pause, and a couple more puffs of his cigar, Al finally told him about Allison Kent. Listening to the Observer's recitation of the facts about Allison's death however, didn't have the effect on him that either man expected. By the time Al said, "And that's the psycho's life history, as much as we have, in a nut shell," Sam had a considering look on his face.

As he put the handlink into his pocket again, the Observer couldn't decide if Sam's 'genius at work' expression was a good sign or not. But as he mentally review all information he'd just given Sam, he decided that he need to find out what was turning the cogs in his friend's brain.

"Okay, now it's your turn," he said firmly, regaining the other's attention. "Out with it. What's just come up to a boil in that nimble noggin of yours?"

Whatever it was, Sam was so focused on it that he didn't realize that he hadn't asked Al to turn around as he got out of the tub. But considering what they'd been talking about, Al simply turned his back when Sam stepped onto the bathmat and took a fluffy, yellow striped towel from the towel bar near him.

"It's so simple," Sam said in the most positive tone of voice he had used yet since leaping in, as he dried himself then wound the towel around his torso. "Stay here," he said, opening the bathroom door. "I'll be right back." To Al's puzzled look he said, "Clean clothes," and turned to leave then turned back again. "Does Tommie have to work today?"

Checking the handlink, Al said, "Yeah. But you don't have to be there until eighty thirty which gives you about an hour and forty-five minutes." As he waited, he wondered about Sam's 'it's so simple' comment. He looked up when his friend returned with clean feminine underwear in one hand and another light summer dress in the other. He shook his head at the dress.

"Uh uh," he told Sam. "You have to wear your Sparkle & Shine uniform," he told him. "Not to worry," Al reassured him. "The uniform consists of a pair of light tan slacks and a light blue, short-sleeved polo shirt with the company name on the back of the shirt and your. .uh, Tommie's name embroidered over the left breast pocket...if there was a pocket," he grinned at the narrow stare he got for that little innuendo. "And white tennis shoes and socks." Unruffled by the look on Sam's face, he said, "Check her dresser drawers."

When Sam finally got back with the slacks and shirt and started to dress, Al waited just long enough for him to put on the underwear before turning back to face him. "Just put your pants on," he said slightly annoyed at the glare he got, "and tell me what's got your fire lit."

Stepping into the slacks, Sam pulled them up and fastened them. Then he pulled the light blue shirt over his head and said again, "It's so simple, Al."

"That's about the third time you've said that, but I still haven't been 'wowwed' with this great idea," Al pointed out.

"But it is," Sam said, as he hung up the damp towel and straightened the bathroom before leaving it. Going into the bedroom for a pair of socks and Tommie's tennis shoes, he noted that Derek had shifted onto his stomach. Going down stairs, Sam sat down on the couch as he put on his shoes and socks, filled Al in on the details of his idea.

"Okay, Derek killed Allison last night," Sam began, keeping his voice low. "But news of her death didn't show up in the newspaper until the tenth, two days from now. That means that her body isn't found until probably sometime tomorrow." Tying his shoes, Sam got up and went into the kitchen.

"Yeah," Al said, following Sam into the kitchen. "So?" He watched his friend pour a glass of milk instead of having hot tea and risking the tea kettle's whistling waking Derek.

"If there's a wild alligator..."

"Well there's damn sure no such thing as a tame alligator," Al interjected. All he got for that was a, "Will you be quiet and listen, please?"

"Okay, I'm shutting up." Al put his hands up in a placating gesture.

"As I was about to say," Sam began again. "If I go to the police this morning and tell them what I suspect, maybe there's still enough time for them to find Allison's body today before that alligator gets to it. That way," he paused to take another swallow of milk. "There's no way that Allison's broken neck can be attributed to anything but murder."

"That's all well and good, Sam, but where's the proof that Derek is the killer?" Al asked, easily falling into the role of devil's advocate. "Without solid, irrefutable proof, he's gonna get away with Allison's murder, just like he has with all the others. And none of those investigations yielded even circumstantial evidence. Plenty of suspicion, but no solid proof." As he finished his thought, Al punched buttons on the handlink, entering Sam's idea, and he didn't the response.

"I don't think it's such a good idea for you to go to the police, Sam," he said plainly. But, he recognized the stubborn set of Sam's jaw that told him he was in for an argument, and tried to head it off before his extremely logically-minded best friend could speak.

"Sam," he began firmly. "Ziggy's come up with some more information on Tommie. Mrs. Ellsine Daigle, one of Tommie and Derek's neighbors down the street, called the cops on Tommie four months ago." That got Sam's attention, and the Observer hurried on.

"Tommie showed up on this woman's front porch at the crack of dawn one morning, wearing baby doll pajamas. She was pounding and kicking the door, screaming accusations that she knew this Mrs. Daigle and Derek were having an affair."

"Were they?"

Al gave Sam another one of those looks. "Mrs. Daigle is seventy-three years old and blind in one eye. Not exactly 'Mister GQ's' type. Anyway, her son, who lives in the other half of the double, called the cops, and Tommie was hauled off to jail for disturbing the peace. She got off with a stiff fine and two days time served."

"What set her off?" Sam asked. Al's response didn't help his frame of mind. "Turns out she forgot to take her medicine for a couple of days."

"And that's it?"

"Not exactly," Al replied. "The day after Tommie got back home, she was served with a permanent restraining order by Mrs. Daigle's lawyer."

"That doesn't sound reasonable..." Sam began.

"Maybe not to you, but it did to a seventy-three year old widow who didn't want another pre-dawn... or any other time...visit from a wild-eyed woman threatening her." Al glanced at the handlink then back to Sam. "According to the court records, Tommie can't go near Mrs. Daigle's house, except for walking past it, or get any closer than two hundred feet of her, anywhere. Now you tell me what's gonna happen if you show up at the police station and start spouting off about knowing where a dead woman's body is? Especially when that dead woman turns out to be the beautiful, wealthy young socialite, Allison Kent, whom your husband just happens to be doing the horizontal tango with. And those bruises could very easily be attributed to that woman fighting for her life, striking out at her assailant." Cocking his head to one side, the Observer waited for the penny to drop as he knew it would. It did.

Sam's agile mind sifted, sorted and almost instantaneously merged the information with logic and arrived at the answer Al already knew. "They'll check Tommie's background and find that incident..."

"Yep," Al nodded. "And you might not make it to work today," Al finished for him. "Because there's a better than eighty-seven point three percent chance that if they decide to check out your story, and they find Allison's body, they'll put two and two together and arrest you.. Tommie for the murder."

But the look in his friend's eyes told him that 'Don Quixote' was on a quest, which meant that 'Sancho' had better be ready for anything. "What are you thinking now?" he asked, but a vague sound got his attention. "What was that?"

An uneasiness seized Sam at Al's words; it didn't get any better when he moved past the hologram to go investigate. Moving slowly through the dining room, Sam's gaze roved ceaselessly; even a smattering of dust motes revealed floating in the air in a narrow shaft of sunlight caught his eye; but it wasn't dust motes he was afraid of finding lurking. Yet not even a search of the living room, the entry way and the closet there, nor the small den at the back of the house revealed anything or anyone. Sam went back and checked the front door. Locked. As he turned away from the door, his eyes glanced up the stairs. Licking his suddenly dry lips, Sam's gaze flickered to Al who read the look easily.

"I'll check on him," he said quietly. "Ziggy, center me on Derek." A second later, Al stood at the foot of the bed where Derek lay sleeping. For a long moment he watched the figure on the bed closely, looking for any sign that he was 'playing possum'. After another minute he was satisfied that the man was still out of it, and recentered on Sam.

Yet because he was so intently focused on Derek, Al didn't bother to look around the room as he might otherwise have done, and so failed to spot the bloodstains on the door knob. And because Derek was laying on his stomach, his injured hand pushed under a pillow, the Observer couldn't see that hand clenched in a fist so tightly that drops of blood were seeping through the blood-soaked bandaging and staining sheet. But if Al had lingered a few seconds longer, what he would've seen would have made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, causing him to instantly order Sam to get out of the house as fast as he could.

Carefully, slowly, Tommie Emerson's husband opened his eyes, rolled onto his side and stared intently at the place where the Observer had stood just seconds before. Pushing himself upright with his uninjured hand, Derek swung his legs over the side of the bed and moved again to the bedroom door. He didn't feel the pain that flared through his injured hand when he used it to once more ease the door open. Nor did he notice as several large drops of blood dripped from the bandaging and soaked into the carpet, his grip on the door knob steadily intensifying as suspicion became rage as he listened to his wife.. and another man... talking near the foot of the stairs.


	14. Chapter 14

**WALKING WITH ACHILLES**

Chapter 13 

Al found Sam still waiting at the foot of the stairs. "Slimeball's still zonked," he reported.

"You sure?" Sam whispered under his breath.

"Out like a light," Al assured him. When the handlink chirped, he glanced at it then said, "Ziggy says that Tommie's finally awake, so I'm gonna go talk to her." Punching in the code to open the Imaging Chamber door, he looked at Sam. "You better get a move on if you're gonna go talk to the police before you go to work, though I still don't like the idea."

"Where is the police station?" Sam asked. "And for that matter, where's this company... Sparkle & Shine... located?" Finding paper and a pen, he wrote down the address and directions Al gave him.

"Thanks, Al," he said, folding the paper and slipping it into his pocket. Watching Al reopen the Imaging Chamber, Sam pushed down the anxiety that welled up as he watched the Observer step inside the chamber, pasting on a confident smile. It was a little harder to hold back whispering, "Hurry back," until the Imaging Chamber door closed, but he did.

Once more alone in the house with Derek, Sam thought about taking the car keys from the small table by the front door where he'd dropped them last night and leaving immediately; in the end, he called a cab. As he started to go outside to wait, a thought occurred to him and he looked around and found a phonebook on a shelf in the small coat closet by the front door. He found the number he wanted, dialed it and when his call was answered, asked for an address. He had just hung up the phone when he heard a car horn outside. Grabbing his purse, Sam hurried to the front door, and then hesitated, glancing up the staircase. "He's asleep," he barely whispered to himself. "Al checked on him." Yet even that small self-assurance didn't make Sam breathe any easier until he locked the door behind him and hurried to the cab waiting in front of the house.

"Where to, ma'am?" the driver asked, turning slightly to unabashedly get a better look at Sam's bruised face.

"The...uh...parish detectives' office," he said, looking up to find the driver's gaze on him. Fumbling in his pocket, he found the paper on which he'd written the directions and addresses Al had given him.

The driver cut him off in mid-sentence with, "Yes, ma'am," then put the car in gear and pulled away from the house. Within ten minutes the cab pulled up in front of a building with a "Sheriff's Office, Detective Unit" sign in front of it.

Sam paid his fare, got out and closed the door, then turned back to the cab.

"Would you wait a few minutes?" he asked.

The driver glanced around the area, spotting a parking meter across the street. "I'll wait ten minutes over there," he said, pointing then drove away from Sam, who waited until he saw the cab park.

Turning, Sam took a deep breath and entered the building.

-------

Detective Siena Jackson was just hanging up the phone when she heard his voice. Looking up, she saw fellow detective Bobby Packard approaching and said simply, "Yeah?"

Having made detective just ten days ago, at age twenty-five years and six weeks, Detective Siena Jackson (named for the village in Tuscany where she had been conceived during her parents' honeymoon), was the new kid on the block. But that wasn't what had bothered a few of the more experienced detectives, a couple only a handful of years older than herself. Nor was it the fact that she was the youngest woman to pass the detective exam, not just the first time she took it, but also with a perfect score, though that had caused a few remarks.

No, what had taken them all by surprise was when she had been assigned to partner with Detective Boudreaux "Boo" Lanson, a veteran of twelve years with the best arrest and conviction record in the parish. Boo's partner, Detective Lyle Storye, had been killed three weeks ago, and in that time at least one 'junior' detective, Bobby Packard, had made no bones about letting it be known that he was ready to fill the void, but that had neither impressed nor influenced the captain.

After a brief discussion with his best detective, he had called Siena into his office and made the pairing official. As the days passed, she and Boo Lanson began to get acquainted, used to each other. Siena had also quickly realized that it was going to take Bobby Packard, the 'eager beaver,' a little while to get past his envy of being passed over for her. She had learned by observation, shortly after being assigned to the precinct, that Bobby was a jokester. With her promotion to detective and now being partnered with "Boo" Lanson, she had begun to keep a wary eye...and ear...out for anything that might be a set-up for a 'get even' joke from him. But eleven days had passed without so much as a hint that he was setting her up. Still, it didn't prevent her from unconsciously wondering as she now waited to hear what Bobby Packard had to say.

"There's a woman out front that says her husband's been beating her..."

Siena rolled her eyes but replied, her tone slightly annoyed at the obvious ruse, "Then send her over to the station so she can file a complaint..."

"Her name is Thomasina Emerson," Bobby deftly cut in. "She also said that she thinks her husband might have something to do with that homicide you and Boo are working on." As he knew it would, that tidbit of information snagged Siena's attention like iron shavings to a magnet.

Siena, though instantly caught by that suggestion, was still wary. She scanned Bobby's blond crew cut, college prep boy good looks narrowly, looking for the slightest suggestion that he was setting her up. As far as she could discern, he was absolutely sincere. But she also considered the total lack of any evidence of any kind at the murder scene of Sharon Cramer, and after a few seconds wavering, decided to accept that he was honestly pointing her at a possible lead in the Sharon Cramer murder, her first homicide case as a detective.

Getting up from the desk, Siena crossed the room, pausing as Bobby stepped back to let her pass. As she moved past him, she paused again, looking steadily into his eyes for a moment. "Where is Mrs. Emerson?" she asked.

"Out front," Bobby said.

Siena scanned his face yet again, but seeing not even a suggestion of amusement anywhere in his expression turned and went out to the public entry area of the building. Opening the door next to the main desk, she saw the woman standing near the full-length glass door looking outside at the bright sunny day. She noted how even from the back the woman's body language bespoke an underlying tension. When she said, "Mrs. Emerson?" the woman jumped nervously before turning around. It was then Siena understood the reason for the tension. The woman looked like she'd been worked over with a baseball bat.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, moving toward Thomasina Emerson. "I didn't mean to startle you." Offering her hand, she decided to get right to the point. "I'm Detective Jackson. I was told you think your husband had something to do with a murder?"

Sam smiled nervously at the detective, glancing furtively out the glass door then back to the patient woman waiting on him.

"Could we go somewhere more private?" he asked. It wasn't like Sam to be so skittish, but from the moment this leap had begun he had learned quickly to be wary of speaking too freely in an open area. He couldn't help the small sigh of relief when Detective Jackson led him back the way she had come. Even when he was at last seated beside a desk with a nameplate with her name on it, Sam still had an uneasy feeling that somehow Derek knew where he was. His uneasiness was reflected in the hesitant smile he gave the detective when he finally made eye contact with her.

Siena Jackson, though still the "new kid" as far as being a detective went, nonetheless had plenty of experience in dealing with nervous women, especially those involved in domestic abuse (whether they admitted it or not). Now, as she waited for Mrs. Emerson to begin, she knew without a doubt that even if the woman before her was one would admit it, that she was afraid of her husband.

When the nervous woman didn't begin to speak immediately, Siena asked, as a way of hopefully putting her at ease, "Would you like some coffee, Mrs. Emerson?"

"No….no, thank you," Sam said, as he sorted through what he knew he could say to the detective without it casting doubts on his, or rather, Tommie's credibility. He saw now, as he had when Al had pointed it out earlier, that he had to walk a very fine and careful line. Meeting the patiently waiting detective's gaze, he bit lightly on his lower lip then took a breath, letting it out slowly as he took the plunge.

Waiting for the clearly ill at ease woman to begin, Siena let her gaze wander for a moment around the room to the other occupied desks of the other detectives. Sal Carleno, a nine-year veteran of the homicide division who had from the first time she'd met him reminded her of the children's TV host Mr. Rogers, was talking on the phone. A couple of desks over, Eric Perkins, too, was on the phone, talking and making notes on the pad in front of him. Turning her head minutely and shifting the direction of her gaze, Siena saw Bobby with Jim Granville, both standing at Sheila Toler's desk, all three talking in a low, animated manner. Seeing and hearing Jim chuckling at something made her watch the threesome closely for a second before dismissing it. Hearing the soft sound of a throat being cleared drew her back to the battered woman.

Knowing how anxiety and fear often had a way of stifling a person's best intentions, Sienna took the lead. Keeping her tone even, she asked, "Mrs. Emerson, what makes you think your husband might have something to do with a homicide?" Apparently it was just the right small nudge that the abused woman needed to get her started talking.

When the question was put to him in the aura of Tommie Emerson, Sam's earlier conversations and the few bits of information that Al had been able to provide him with so far swirled swiftly through his mind. Carefully he weighed the truth he wanted to blurt out against the elements of that truth which logic and not a little common sense were telling him were not safe to speak about. After another moment's consideration, Sam licked his lips and began to speak, choosing his words and inflections with a great deal of care.

"My...husband has a violent temper," he began slowly, "and, as you can see, he takes it out on me."

Siena just nodded slightly. During her still young career in law enforcement, she had heard many battered women – some wives, some girlfriends – say pretty much the same thing. Now she listened to what the woman was saying, pen at the ready should some interesting something come forth from Thomasina Emerson. "It's unfortunate that he does that," she offered, keeping her tone even. "But that doesn't necessarily make him a killer."

"When he got home this morning he beat me…" Lifting one hand, the time traveler gingerly touched his fingertips to the massive bruising around his eye. Licking his lips nervously, he said, "Before he left for work, he told me not to be like the others."

Siena's radar perked up at that but she revisited something the woman had said a moment earlier. "You said he'd just gotten home…and then he was leaving for work?" She fixed the woman with a keen look. "Does your husband work two jobs?"

Sam shook his head carefully. "No," he responded. "He's a golf pro at the country club." Even as the words passed his lips, he saw her gaze flick away from him to another point in the room. Nervously he turned to follow the direction of her gaze. Discovering that she had looked at a desk where three other detectives were standing caused his anxiety to rise. Maybe Al was right. Maybe he shouldn't have come here after all, but it was too late now. Shifting around again to face Detective Jackson, Sam blurted out, "My husband is having an affair," as the scenario of his leap in sprang up before his mind's eye in all of its pain, fear and intimidation.

Upon hearing the words 'country club', followed almost instantly that the abused woman's husband was having an affair, Siena's focus and interest sharpened. "Which one?"

Sam hesitated at the question as he held her gaze. "Which one?" he parroted the question. Tiny frown lines appeared on his brow as he searched through all of the information Al had given him. "It's… it's...uhm…" Offering her an uncertain small smile, he apologized, "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," the detective reassured. Then Siena, a fourth generation native of The Big Easy, named several of the golf and country clubs in the metropolitan area, hoping that one of them would strike a note of recognition with Mrs. Emerson. "What about Lakewood Golf Club?" Seeing the woman shake her head vaguely, Siena mentioned three more. "Could it be The New Orleans Country Club, or maybe Stonebridge? English Turn?"

Sam's head was starting to hurt with the intensity of his concentration as he finely sifted through what he knew of Derek Emerson, desperately hoping to find the name of that country club. Just when he was about to admit he didn't know, a tiny something flickered through his thoughts and was instantly gone, but not before he snagged a miniscule snippet. Licking his lips, he looked at Detective Siena Jackson and said, "I…I think it starts with a 'v'."

Siena studied the woman a moment then thoughtfully said, "Well, there's Vine Lawn Country Club, and there's also Vista-View Golf and Country Club." Inwardly she sighed when the woman apologized yet again when neither name seemed to ring a bell. It didn't help any when she let her gaze rove back to Sheila Toler's desk and found the other detective watching her with a clearly amused look in her eyes. That Bobby was still at her desk, albeit with his back to her, only started the little voice in the back of her mind whispering, "He gotcha!" Siena, however, determinedly pushed that notion down and renewed her focus on Tommie Emerson, letting the woman talk as well as asking a few more questions over the next twenty minutes.

At last there came a point where the detective and Sam sat and looked at each other without saying anything for a long minute or so. It was Sam who finally broke the silence, glancing at his watch then getting to his feet, holding tightly to the strap of his purse.

"I've got to get to work," he began, offering his hand and clasping Detective Siena Jackson's proffered hand firmly. He had seen the way the woman's expression had subtly changed after looking past him to the other detectives the second time. It had changed from one of close focus to studied, patient humoring. He wasn't sure if he was more concerned or relieved that the detective had decided that he… that Tommie wasn't to be believed.

Siena smiled at Sam in the aura of Tommie Emerson. "Thank you for coming in, Mrs. Emerson," she said in her best professional voice as she escorted the woman back to the main desk area. As a matter of experienced habit, she asked, "Where do you work? Just in case I need to clarify something?" Taking a small top spiral notepad from her pocket, Siena jotted down the information Sam gave her and put the notebook in her pocket again.

At the doorway into the waiting area, Sam paused and turned to face Siena Jackson. "I'm sorry, I couldn't be of more help," he said earnestly. "If I remember anything else, I'll call you, if that's okay."

"Of course," Siena said, reaching into the pocket of her tan jacket to retrieve one of her business cards then handed it over. Scanning the woman's badly bruised face, she added, "Take care of yourself."

Sam smiled ruefully. "I will," he said then thanked her again for her time and walked out the front door. Looking across the street, much to his surprise, the cab driver had apparently decided to wait for him. Checking for oncoming traffic, Sam hurried to the cab, calling out, "Thank you so much for waiting. I'm sorry it took a little longer than I expected."

The cab driver brushed Sam's thanks off with a slight wave of his hand. "No calls," he lied easily. The truth was that from the moment he'd set eyes on her, the abused young woman had reminded him of his own two daughters. That thought had been enough for him. He'd like to think that someone else would extend unasked for, unexpected kindness to one of his girls were she in whatever situation this woman was struggling through. So it was he'd taken his break early and waited. He wanted to be sure that, at least today, while he had a chance to help, that this young woman arrived safely at her next destination.

"Where to?" he asked, glancing back as Sam got into the backseat.

Closing the door of the cab, Sam dug the slip of paper from his purse and gave him the address of Sparkle & Shine Cleaning Service. The driver made a note on his call sheet, tripped the meter then put the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. As the car began to move, Sam glanced at the building he had just exited and felt a little something positive when he saw Detective Jackson standing in the open front door. He hesitated then lifted a hand and gave a little wave. He wasn't sure if she had seen the gesture or not, as she didn't respond in kind. Sighing softly, the time traveler leaned back and closed his eyes for the duration of the brief ride to Tommie's place of employment, hoping it would help to dissipate the headache that was trying to take hold.

If Sam had remained alert and looking around, he would have noticed when the cab passed by a familiar red Chevy Caprice parked just up the street at the corner just past the building that housed the Parish Detective's Unit. Unfortunately for him as well, Detective Jackson had retreated inside the building again and so neither had she seen the solitary red car with a darkly infuriated and dangerous Derek Emerson sitting inside it and staring after the way the cab bearing Sam had gone. A full ten minutes passed before the Chevy Caprice drove away and disappeared.

----------

For a moment or so after Thomasina Emerson had walked out the front door, Siena Jackson just stood, watching through the tempered glass front door as the woman had hurried to a cab waiting across the street. Mulling over the past twenty minutes or so, she started to turn then stopped at an insistent tugging by earned instinct, looked toward the front door again then obeyed that instinct and went to push open the door. She made no attempt to step outside, instead watching silently as the cab driver turned his head to speak to the battered woman in the backseat before driving off a moment later. She saw when Thomasina Emerson looked her way and waved, but didn't respond. Siena watched until the cab turned right at the corner and disappeared, then stepped back inside. The moment she opened the door to return to the squad room she heard the laughter, recognizing Bobby Packard's familiar chortling laugh as she walked the length of the short hall and entered the main squad room where she was greeted by grins and laughter from all of her fellow detectives.


	15. Chapter 15

WALKING WITH ACHILLES

Chapter 14

"Mind letting me in on the joke?" Siena asked, her tone more or less equable as she approached the group still gathered around Detective Toler's desk. She'd known this was bound to happen sooner or later. She didn't say anything when Sheila Toler tried to put on an apologetic expression as she said, "Sorry 'bout that, Siena. They swore me to secrecy," merely arching one eyebrow in reply. Siena dismissed that, opting instead to turn to the joke's instigator. Bobby Packard's expression was entirely gleeful and not even in the remotest realm of repentance as she crossed her arms loosely across her chest.

For Bobby Packard the initiation joke that had been served up just for the taking and using when he responded to the receptionist as he'd come in to start his shift was damn near too good to be true. Hearing the name mentioned and glancing through the window into the waiting area and seeing the woman for himself, he couldn't believe his luck. At the doorway of the squad room, before he entered, he'd caught the eye of Sheila Toler and Jim Granville, signaling to them to get Sal and Eric's attention. It took only a few seconds and as soon as everyone put on a straight expression, he had entered and walked over to Siena's desk to set the 'gift' initiation joke into motion. Now, he was enjoying the expression on Siena Jackson's face, though deep down inside it still seriously rankled that he had been passed over to partner with Boo Lanson.

"Can I ask you a question, Detective Jackson?" Bobby asked, thoroughly enjoying the moment.

"And what would that be, Bobby?" Siena asked, wearing a pasted-on smile of endurance.

Bobby's grin increased as he asked, his tone cheeky, clearly reveling in the moment, "Was anybody home?"

Siena's brow furrowed lightly as her gaze narrowed at him. "What?"

Bobby tried –but not too hard– to swallow the chuckle when Eric Perkins and Jim broke into guffaws when he clarified his question. "Mrs. Emerson," he said lightly, his eyes dancing with 'gotcha' glee, "was the porch light on?" Sheila and Sal's intentions broke down upon hearing the familiar phrase spoken as the squad room filled with laughter.

It all added up in the space of a few seconds and Siena's gaze swept over her more experienced and ranking colleagues, coming to rest on Bobby's face at the last. She saw in his eyes he was waiting for her to ask but denied him the satisfaction.

"Considering how badly her husband beat her, I think she represented herself pretty darned well," she responded, allowing a vague coolness to temper it.

Quirking an eyebrow at him when she saw the satisfaction lessen in his hopeful expression, Siena walked back to her desk and sat down. As she began reviewing the few notes she'd made during the now seemingly 'wild goose chase' interview with Thomasina Emerson, the squad room door opened again. Looking up when she heard her partner's name called, she ignored the flash of irritation that tried to start as she watched Bobby follow Boo Lanson as he went to the coffeemaker set up on one side of the room and poured himself a cup of coffee. She watched a moment longer, unable to ignore Bobby's description of the initiation joke that had just taken place. Shaking her head, Siena returned her attention to her notes. She was still pondering them when she heard footsteps and looked up to see Boo coming toward her, his eyes twinkling.

Pausing in front of his partner's desk and taking a sip from his cup of coffee, Boo Lanson sized up the moment. "Look at it this way," he said with a slow grin. "Next time you'll be in on it and watching from the other side."

Siena cocked her head a bit to one side and slid a look up at him, glanced past him to where Bobby and Sheila were still talking and laughing then back to her partner. "Would you mind explaining the joke to me?"

Stepping around the desk, Boo sat down in the chair formerly occupied by Sam. Fixing Siena with a knowing grin he told her, "Mrs. Emerson is something of a regular."

"A regular?" Siena asked, her thoughts on her notes forgotten for the moment. "You mean she comes in here on a regular basis and does this sort of thing?"

Boo chuckled and shook his head. "No, but in the last four or five years, there have been a few responses to her home address."

Siena rolled her eyes and started to shake her head, but then Boo Lanson said something that really clinched it for her.

"Two or three of those times ended up with the responding officers hauling her off to Charity," he said then took another swallow of his chicory-based coffee, so popular in New Orleans, generously laced with cream.

"So she's a nut job?" Siena came back. Boo was a little more charitable.

"Not so much a nut job, as she had forgotten to take her medication." He studied his partner's face a moment then glanced at the notes on the desk in front of the younger detective. Nodding slightly at the notes he asked, "Why was she in here this time?" He listened without comment as Siena gave him a quick summary of the interview with the person that, to her, looked like Thomasina Emerson. When she finished he made the comment, "Vista-Views is the most exclusive country club in the city."

"How exclusive?"

Boo shrugged. "Exclusive to the point that if you have to wonder if you can afford to belong to it, the bottom line is that you can't."

When Siena looked up at him, asking, "You think maybe Sharon Kramer belonged to Vista-Views?" he paused, his coffee cup almost at his lips.

"Why don't we take a ride out there and find out?" As he took the swallow of his coffee, he saw her expression alter subtly. "What?"

Siena's gaze moved up the list of notes she'd made to one in particular, studied it a moment longer before looking at Boo again. "Maybe there's something to what Mrs. Emerson was saying." She tapped one specific notation with the end of her pen. "She said that her husband works at a country club."

Boo's interest was evident now. "Vista-Views?"

"She wasn't sure," Siena admitted. "She'd been beaten pretty badly…"

"Her husband? Did she press charges?"

"Yes and no," Siena responded. "She admitted that he beat her yesterday morning when he got home, but she didn't press charges."

"So why was she here?"

Siena met and held her partner's gaze. "She said that she thinks her husband might have something to do with a murder." She paused then added, "All she could remember about the country club that her husband works at – he's a golf pro – was that the name of it started with a 'v'."

"She say anything else of interest?" Boo Lanson asked as he and Siena rose simultaneously to their feet and headed toward the squad room door.

Having regaled Boo Lanson with the details of the initiation joke that had been pulled on Siena, Bobby Packard could only watch as the detective he'd have given his eye teeth to be partnered with went over and sat down with Siena Jackson and begun talking shop. As well as the joke had come off, it continued to steadily inflame his resentment toward Boo's new partner…_The captain should have put me with Boo!_ At the moment however, all he could do was to go to his own desk and get started on some paperwork that had to be finished sooner rather than later regarding his and Jim Granville's last successful collar.

His desk was located within six or so feet of Siena Jackson's desk, and Bobby Packard had not the smallest qualm about listening to the conversation going on at that desk. As he listened, he also paused in his legitimate paperwork just long enough to scribble down the name of the business he'd heard Thomasina Emerson give as her place of employment to the woman he envied for her partnering of the parish's best detective. Keeping an eye on the twosome, Bobby found a phone book, quickly looking up the address for Sparkle & Shine, the cleaning service and jotting it on the piece of paper with that business name already on it.

Just then, from the corner of his eye, Bobby caught sight of movement and looked over to see Boo and Siena get up and head for the door. Grabbing the slip of paper and shoving it into his pocket, Bobby got up, forcing himself not to run after the pair. It wasn't acceptable to his male pride to possibly be likened to a left behind puppy chasing after a bigger dog, hoping to be allowed to go along; but that didn't mean he couldn't leave the building at the same time. Boo had reached and opened the door by the waiting area for Siena when Bobby caught up to them.

"Thanks, Boo," he said with a grin when the other man indicated that he should go ahead of him. "I didn't know you cared."

Boo Lanson's own grin broadened as he followed the two detectives a bit younger than himself through the door and then outside. "Don't flatter yourself," he said as he joined his partner as she headed for their assigned unmarked car. "You're not my type."

Detective Bobby Packard just chuckled at the lighthearted reply as he moved casually closer to the driver's side as Boo Lanson got inside and started the engine. Putting a hand on the top of the car, he leaned down slightly then grinned when Boo glanced up at him. "You never know, Boo," he said lightly.

Boo just grinned as he put the car into gear and prepared to back out of the parking space. "You don't mind if I don't put that in my diary, do you?" Not waiting or taking much note of the other man's reaction or expression, he said, "Later," and backed the car out and headed out of the parking area located along side the building.

In the parking area, Bobby Packard glowered after the dark blue Ford sedan as it drove away, his anger bubbling up in the form of coarse swearing under his breath, adding another layer of blame on Siena Jackson for usurping the position that he felt should have come to him. As he stood there a light breeze touched his face but the refreshing soft spring air went unnoticed as his mind sorted and resorted all he'd learned in the past half hour or so. Reaching into his breast pocket to retrieve the haphazardly folded piece of paper, Bobby read the address scribbled on it as he went to get into his own car and take off.

---------

In spite of having left the building that housed the parish detective unit close to fifteen minutes after Thomasina Emerson, as well as having to detour around some road repair work halfway to his destination, time and luck seemed to be on Bobby Packard's side. Spotting a yellow cab with black lettering about a half a block ahead, he pulled in behind it, staying some two-car lengths between the two vehicles. From his vantage point, he watched as Thomasina Emerson emerged from the cab then waited until the vehicle pulled out into the flow of traffic again. Bobby watched the abused woman turn to look at the building. She appeared to hesitate as she read the large sign above the entrance that proclaimed "There's no house or job too big or too small for us to make it Sparkle & Shine". Thomasina had just started toward the front door when Bobby got out of the car, slammed the door lightly, calling out, "Mrs. Emerson?" He noted but dismissed the way the woman appeared startled by the sound of his voice, and strode quickly toward her.

"Mrs. Emerson?" the determined detective queried again, barely keeping a sharp edge out of his voice as he drew even with the watchful abused woman.

If Sam's heart had been a racecar it might have easily been clocked going from zero to ninety in the two seconds between hearing an authoritative male voice call out to him as Thomasina Emerson and his reacting to it. Freezing in his steps, he forced himself to take a quick breath before turning around to see who had called him. He relaxed only minutely when the young man with crew cut good looks and wearing a dark gray suit with a pale yellow button down shirt, hurried up to him. "Yes," he began carefully. "Who are you?"

"I'm sorry if I startled you, Mrs. Emerson," Bobby began smoothly and put on a professional polite expression. "My name is Detective Packard. I work with Detective Siena Jackson…you came to see her a little while ago."

Sam looked the younger man over quickly but didn't see any sign that he was lying. In fact, he remembered this one, remembered having seen him briefly talking to the receptionist before Detective Jackson had come out and took him back to her desk to talk. "What do you want?" He glanced at the slim watch on his left wrist and began, "I'm already five minutes late…"

Bobby kept his cool. "This will only take a moment," he said, pulling his ever-present notepad and pen from his inside jacket pocket. He made a point of looking closely at the woman's battered face, the shadow of bruising not completely hidden by the slightly open collar of her blue pullover shirt before he continued, repeating just enough of what he'd overheard during the interview to make his reason for being there plausible. "Detective Jackson had to go out on another call. As she was leaving, she told me she was concerned for your safety." Bobby paused again then said, "She gave me this address and asked me to come and talk to you." He paused, staring at the ugly bruises a moment before adding, his tone even, "She wanted me to confirm whether or not you intend on pressing abuse charges against your husband."

Sam all but recoiled from the comment, shivering involuntarily and feeling like someone had run a cold finger down his back at just hearing the words. "N..no," he said more forcefully than he'd intended. "No. I'll be fine." He glanced at his watch again and walked quickly toward Sparkle & Shine's front door, freezing in his steps when the detective put a hand on his arm then moved around to face him again.

"Are you sure, Mrs. Emerson?" Bobby asked, his tone a shade firmer. "All you have to do is come down to the station and file a complaint and we'll take it from there." Flipping the notebook open, he took the pen from his pocket and poised it over the paper as he looked into Sam's eyes. "Now, where does your husband work?"

Knowing that with just one word he could ensure that he could return to the Emerson house and have a peaceful…unafraid night's sleep was very tempting for the hurting leaper. But even as he was entertaining that idea, the other side of the argument – that Derek would be released on bail and would, more than likely, come looking for him…Tommie – vanquished the temptation.

"No, detective," he said again, his tone firmer as he moved away from the man, going to open the front door of the Sparkle & Shine business. "I'll be fine…"

"Mrs. Emerson," Bobby tried again, following her a couple of steps. "Thomasina…"

Sam took a deep breath and turned to look at the determined man. "I said no, Detective Packard," he said bluntly. "Please thank Detective Jackson for her concern. Now please excuse me. I've got to get inside and get to work," and saying that, went inside the building. Once inside, Sam had to field the concern of several of Tommie's co-workers and then convince her employer that he was quite capable of working the shift in spite of his appearance. Involved with memorizing the names of the women and learning where the group Tommie was assigned to work with was heading for, he forgot about the young police detective who had followed him to work.

Derek Emerson, however, had not forgotten about Detective Bobby Packard. In fact, upon arriving at the block where Sparkle & Shine was located, he drove closer, feeling his simmering fury heat up more and more as he witnessed the one he perceived as his wife talking to and, it appeared, listening to another man. Pulling up behind a delivery truck down and across the street, Derek seethed, as he watched the couple. It didn't matter to him that Tommie went inside her place of employment, leaving the man standing on the sidewalk and staring at the door. It didn't matter. He'd warned her only yesterday what would happen if he ever caught her cheating on him. Then his gaze fixed on the man now returning to and getting into his car and exiting the area. Putting the Caprice into gear, Derek Emerson pulled out and fell in behind the dark blue sedan.

----------

Frustrated that he hadn't been able to sweet talk or finagle even a tiny scrap of information out of Thomasina Emerson, Bobby Packard drove around for a half hour in the mid-morning traffic. A couple of times he doubled back to drive past Sparkle & Shine, hoping to catch sight of Thomasina Emerson but by the second pass the four company vans with the perky logo on the sides were gone.

"Dammit!" Bobby swore under his breath, smacking the steering wheel with a fist as he reached the end of Meline Street. Coming to a stop at the Stop sign at the corner, he glanced both ways then started to ease forward. "Might as well get back to the office and finish that report," he muttered, but at the last second, he got an idea. Glancing at his watch he saw that it was close to 10:00 o'clock.

"The report can wait thirty more minutes," he justified as flipped the turn signal for a right turn and headed for The Lunch Box. Less than ten minutes later, he turned his car into the narrow, graveled-parking area in front of The Lunch Box. Getting out, as a matter of habit, he glanced toward the road, noting a couple of trucks and a red car passing on by. Idly he noticed the red car turn into one of the trucking business, then turned and walked across the parking area to the take out window at one end of the small building. He grinned when Ted Deedim looked out the window and hollered jovially, "Sorry, man. Lunch won't be ready for another hour."

The Lunch Box was a little "hole in the wall" diner near a scrap metal yard and a couple of other businesses dealing in construction and freight handling, big trucks constantly rumbling in and out of one or another of the yards. It was flanked on the left by Cool & Sweet, a snowball stand and on the right by another small business that sold ready-made sandwiches and soft drinks. While the simple, day to day food served at The Lunch Box wasn't in danger of winning any prizes for haute cuisine, it was consistently hot, tasty and filling, and the Luzianne iced tea was always icy cold in the summer. It was a tribute to the consistently good food that many of the employees of the nearby businesses, and not a few of the men who drove the big trucks endlessly coming and going out of the yards, kept The Lunch Box busy year round. However, there were two other things that brought Detective Bobby Packard back to The Lunch Box on a fairly regular basis.

One of those things was that it was where one of his most reliable snitches liked to grab a bite to eat, and secondly, it was the coffee. He wasn't sure what brand of coffee Ted Deedim used, but from the time Bobby had downed a cup on his first day of patrolling with his partner after graduating from the New Orleans Police Academy seven years ago, he wouldn't stop anywhere else for coffee.

"In that case, give me a large coffee and I'll come back later," Bobby quipped. By the time he reached the small window, a large coffee with two creams already swirled into the fragrant dark brew was sitting, waiting for him. Pulling a dollar bill and a couple of quarters from his pocket, Bobby put it beside the cup then picked it up and enjoyed a sip of the coffee. "What's the special today?"

"Smothered pork chops, macaroni and cheese, green beans and corn bread," Ted Deedim answered as he rang up the sale of the coffee. Glancing at the detective who had been a familiar, friendly regular for the last seven years, he offered, "Want me to have Rosie save you a plate?"

"Nah, that's okay," Bobby politely declined the offer. Forgetting momentarily about things he had to do as well as those certain things aggravating him, for a few minutes he lingered, chatting idly with Ted at the window where, in a little over an hour, hardworking, hungry men would line up to order and pick up their lunches. But a cup of coffee takes only so long to drink and soon Bobby drained the last drops from his cup. Walking over to toss the empty cup into the trash barrel placed at the corner of the small building he heard a phone ring and glanced back toward the window when he heard Ted answer it, then turned to go to his car. He only gone a few steps when he heard a rattling and swiveled around in time to see Ted slamming the service window shut and the "Closed" sign slapped down in front of it. Frowning, he stood there, listening to the other man moving around inside. He didn't move when the side door that opened into the space between The Lunch Box and the sandwich place slammed open and Ted Deedim rushed out, pausing only long enough to lock the door before hurrying past Bobby, heading for the dusty green Dodge truck parked at the end of the strip of the three small buildings.

"Ted, what's matter?" Bobby called, reaching the truck as the other man jumped in and started the engine and put it gear. Only the detective putting his hands on the frame of the open window prevented the diner's owner from roaring off. "What's wrong?"

Ted Deedim's face was clearly anxious and concerned as he said tersely, "My mama's had a heart attack. She's at West Jeff. I gotta go, man."

Bobby immediately stepped back from the truck, nodding his understanding. "Go!" he called to the other man, but by the time the word was said the tires on Ted's truck were spitting back spurts of the loose gravel as he peeled out and sped off down the street.

For a minute the detective just stood in the soft April morning sunshine and looked around, listening to the noises indigenous to the businesses all around him. Then, checking his watch and noting the time, Bobby sighed, turning toward his car yet again. It was at that moment that he heard what sounded like trashcans being knocked over. Turning around, he moved over to peer down the alleyway between the two buildings, scanning the area with a keen eye. There was silence for a moment and then the sound came again.

"Who's back there?" he called out, his voice and tone strong and authoritative. Remaining alert, Bobby strode down the alleyway, noting that by the renewed sound of a trash can lid rattling that it was likely a stray cat looking for something to eat. Reaching the end, he glanced to one side then grinned, relaxing when he did indeed see a skinny, orange-striped tabby cat poised atop a large metal trash can placed near a dark blue dumpster.

"Go on," he called loudly, clapping his hands a couple of times as he went. "Scat!" Seeing the way the cat paused to turn and stare, wide-eyed at him, Bobby continued toward the animal. "Go on…scat!" He laughed when the cat suddenly leapt from the trashcan and disappeared around the dumpster, but because he was focused on the cat, Bobby didn't hear the light step behind him. The only thing he had time to realize or recognize was the sudden and unexpected feel of a gun muzzle pressed against the back of his head. Then the gun 'coughed' softly and Detective Bobby Packard dropped to the ground.

Derek Emerson stood over the dead body on the ground and glared at it, feeling his rage lessen a bit. "That's one of you," he spat the words coldly as he shoved the pistol into the back of his jeans. He wasted no time in searching Bobby Packard's pockets and getting his keys. Then Derek made short work of opening the dumpster and then hefting the body into it and carefully raking some of the bags of stinking garbage over it. Closing the dumpster lid again, he scuffed the area where the body had been, even grabbing some handfuls of nearby gravel and putting it over the bloodstained spot where the detective had fallen face down.

When he was satisfied that the area would pass glancing muster, Derek walked out of the alleyway and casually went to the dark blue unmarked police car, got in and drove away. A mile up the road near a bend near the levee, he parked it alongside the road then used his knife to put a hole between the treads on one of the tires. Moving casually, he climbed the levee and walked carefully down to the water's edge. Looking around and not seeing anybody, Derek pulled the pistol out and pitched it as hard as he could out into the fast moving water then disappeared back over the levee and headed back to the business a few hundred yards from The Lunch Box to get his car.


	16. Chapter 16

**WALKING WITH ACHILLES**

**Chapter 15**

Stepping back through the Imaging Chamber door and watching it close, knowing that Sam was alone again with Derek hadn't been an easy thing for Al to do. Not for the first time since Sam had begun leaping, he wished he could be there, physically be there, help him, to watch his back. But he couldn't before and couldn't now. Now, as the door opened to allow him to re-enter the Control Room, Al Calavicci put aside the wishing, focusing instead on doing those things he could do to help Sam. At this moment, that meant heading to the Waiting Room, questions he wanted to ask the Visitor beginning to form in his mind. It didn't surprise him in the least when he rounded the next corner two minutes later to see Verbena Beeks arriving from the opposite direction.

Reaching the two Marines stationed on either side of the Waiting Room door, Al waited for Verbena to reach him. "How is she?" he asked then turned to put his hand on the recognition plate and waited for it to scan his palm. Next he leaned a bit closer and was still until the retinal scanner verified, "Recognition of Admiral Albert Calavicci confirmed." He stepped aside to allow Verbena to be verified for entrance.

"Recognition of Dr. Verbena Beeks confirmed," the computer voice announced. Immediately the Waiting Room door slid open and they entered, the door sliding shut again.

Verbena paused, turning to look at Al. "Now that she's had some rest, she's better," she replied then put a hand on his arm. Glancing at the Visitor, sitting on the side of the bed and watching them, even as the female nurse taking her vital signs softly reassured her, Verbena turned back to Al, saying, "I had Ziggy access Tommie's medical records. Going by what her doctor had prescribed for her, I've given her a mild dose of Lithium, so she's more settled. Al," Verbena's tone took on a firmer aspect as she added, "you're the only man she's seen since she arrived. And I know I don't have to tell you to not yell or get demanding with her." She acknowledged his telling expression with a slight nod. "I know, Al, I know. But right now, Tommie's in a fragile emotional state…"

"I'll wear my best kid gloves," he said softly, his tone light, but not a whit less than understanding as he turned and walked with her to the bed. Glancing at the nurse as she was removing the blood pressure cuff from Tommie's left arm, Al shifted his focus to the Visitor, giving her a warm smile. "Hello, Tommie. My name is Al. I'm in charge here. Dr. Beeks," he glanced at his colleague beside him, "told me you were awake. How are you feeling?" Though the battered young woman now wearing a clean Fermi suit (the first one having been blood-stained upon her arrival in the Waiting Room) looked rested, she was clearly a bit nervous about his proximity.

Tommie's gaze flickered to Verbena, and it was only the psychiatrist's calm assurance, "You can trust him," that enabled her to meet Al's steady dark brown gaze.

The Visitor spoke slowly, taking care not to aggravate the healing splits in her lower lip. "I…hurt…everywhere," Tommie whispered then ever so carefully ran the tip of her tongue over her injured lip. "But I'm okay." Moving slowly, she shifted her position, putting her legs on the bed again and started to lay down. She smiled timidly, nodding when Al asked, "Would you like to sit up?" Verbena, still standing at the foot of the bed, pressed a button, holding it down until the head of the bed had slowly elevated to a more upright inclined position and waited for Tommie to indicate that she was comfortable. "I'm okay," she repeated again then paused, looking up as the nurse patted one of her hands before leaving. Returning her attention to the Observer, Tommie reached up to brush a curl of hair back from her temple. A slight trembling of her hand as she did so was a clear giveaway to the fear and anxiety that was still simmering under the surface.

Al would have preferred to allow the Visitor more time to rest and calm down, but leisure time during a leap was the exception, never the rule. This leap, however, it was even more imperative that the Observer obtain as much information as he could from Tommie. He also didn't allow himself to ponder what Tommie Emerson's life would be like if Sam failed to thwart Derek any further than the thought that chased that wondering away.

_'You know good and well that if Sam fails, Tommie will live out the rest of her life right here.'_

Dismissing that notion out of hand, Al moved around the bed and drew up the chair, brought in for the nurses who had been sitting with the Visitor, a bit closer and sat down. He examined the questions he wanted to ask Tommie Emerson then chose one and asked it, his tone and expression calm, his voice gentle.

"Tommie," he began, choosing each word carefully. "I know that all of this – finding yourself here with us— added to what happened to you just before you got here…" Al stopped speaking when he saw the fear appear plainly in Tommie's eyes and body language as she turned suddenly to look at the Waiting Room door. Reactively, he started to reach a hand to touch her hand to reassure her, but a slight movement caught his eye and he saw Verbena give a subtle negative shake of her head. Heeding the warning, Al instead said, "You're safe, Tommie. Derek can't get to you in here." His reward was Tommie turning back to face him, her huge blue eyes boring into his as she whispered, "Are you sure?"

This time Al moved to sit on the edge of the chair and reached to take hold of the battered young woman's hands, pressing them gently and looking into her eyes. "I give you my word, Tommie. There is not the smallest chance that your husband has an inkling of where you are. You are safe." He smiled at her, adding, "I promise."

As she watched from her vantage point at the foot of the bed as Al slowly began to win the Visitor's severely damaged trust, Verbena thought back an hour to the conversation that had taken place between she and Tommie. She had warned Al to take it easy with his questioning of Tommie, and was completely confident that he would heed her warning, even if she weren't in the room. Yet for all of her faith and confidence in Al's good judgment, she could not, in good conscience, leave Tommie alone with Al. At the very least and at the most, she had no doubt the young woman would want the support of another woman she could trust to stay with her.

Assured, at least for the moment, that Tommie was willing to trust him, Al continued, finishing the preface of his question. "Tommie, I know this is going to be hard for you," he said clearly and calmly. "But I need for you to tell me what was happening to you before you woke up here." Maintaining his hold of her hands, Al felt the full body tremble that enveloped the Visitor, saw the way her face paled, her breathing increasing a bit at the question. Licking his lips, Al said, his words a shade firmer, "There's nothing to be afraid of here, I promise. But, Tommie…it would really be a big help to us to help us…" He hesitated a moment, searching for the right words to put a positive spin on his thought then finished that thought when that 'right way' came to him. "We're working on a way to make sure that you will be safe when you do go home again. But we really need to know what was happening just before you came here." Ever so lightly, Al squeezed the Visitor's hands, never once breaking his gaze with hers.

Up until the death of her beloved, if stubborn, father, Tommie Emerson had never had any reason to fear any man. It was only afterwards that she became painfully, fearfully acquainted with the ugliness of a man's – her husband's rage from that first time until it had become a terrifying normalcy to be expected on a near daily basis. Then, from one moment to the next, as she had lay where she had fallen from one of Derek's multiple vicious punches to her face, Tommie had found herself here in this large blue room, where she was treated with the utmost kindness and care by the nurses and Dr. Beeks. It was because of all that, especially Dr. Beeks' caring and understanding that Derek's wife was able to push aside that initial reaction to Al's request and try to tell him what he wanted to know. "Okay," Tommie whispered then squeezed her eyes shut, slightly tilting her head a bit as she always did when trying to focus her thoughts.

It only took a moment as the freshness of those terrifying moments defied the Swiss-cheesing effect commonly experienced by Visitors to the Waiting Room, replaying in all their too vivid, too horrific clarity before her mind's eye. There was no preventing her physical reaction as she trembled again, but a part of her heritage, the stubbornness inherited from her father, began to scratch and claw its way out from under the fear which had tried to smother it, dragging along with it the instinctive will to survive. It was those two things that aided Tommie in ignoring the fear and helping to steady her voice as she began to speak.

"Derek went out last night," she began, her voice almost a whisper, "like he does...a lot." Licking her lips, she paused to take a deep if shaky breath, paused again then added, "He…he went to see…her."

Al's pulse quickened at the last word but his voice was calm as he prompted gently, "Who, Tommie? Who did Derek go to see last night?"

It was a dispiriting, shaming hurt that Tommie had learned to accept in her brief and violent marriage. The shame she felt was no less painful as she looked into the Observer's steady dark gaze and said quietly, "His girlfriend." Seeing the sympathy in the dark eyes watching her so patiently, she felt the stubbornness getting a tad stronger as she added, "He… he's had several g..girlfriends since we've been together. He…he tells me they're beautiful…not like me."

Al patently ignored his own sense of outrage at what Tommie Emerson was telling him, choosing instead to try and help maintain her unsteady self-confidence. "But you are beautiful," he told her firmly, giving her hands a tiny subtle shake when she dropped her gaze to the bed. He repeated the movement, a bit more insistently, when she gave a small, mirthless half-laugh and slowly shook her head, murmuring, "Yeah," before she lifted her head to look at him again, adding, "Have you taken a good look at me?"

There were many things Al could have said to deflate the Visitor's self-inflicted derogatory remark, things he'd said, and meant, to the women he'd dated and loved –especially those he had married—throughout his life. However, it was a tried and consistently true old saying that he offered to Tommie. "Hey," he said softly then repeated it more firmly, waiting until her gaze met his again. "This may be as old, or older than me," he told her as the slow warm smile that had captured more female hearts than could be counted over the years spread across his face. He watched the nervous fluttering of Tommie's eyelashes, waiting until he heard her ask what so many other women had asked, "What's that?"

"That beauty is in the eye of the beholder," he said. He jiggled her hand again, stopping her at, "But…look at me."

"I am looking, Tommie," Al told her, looking beyond the ugly dark purple swelling around her blue eyes. "Yes, I see the bruises and cuts, but the outer beauty is only one part of a woman's beauty. A woman's truest beauty though is that which comes from within her." Holding her gaze he added, "And you're strong, too."

Tommie's gaze dropped, fixing again on her hands nestled within Al's hands. "I'm not strong," she began in a resigned whisper.

Al squeezed her hands again gently and when that didn't bring the Visitor's gaze up to his, he reached to put a couple of fingers under her chin and gently lifted her head until their gazes met. "Yes," he told her in a firm yet understanding voice, "you are, Tommie."

It was only a couple of drops of rain in the thirsty desert of Tommie Emerson's spirit, but Al Calavicci was encouraged as he watched them seep into her battered psyche, her expression changing minutely, a vague shading of color returning to her face as her spirit absorbed it. He waited a minute then pressed her again about Derek. He was further encouraged when he noted that the shading of pink didn't fade from her cheeks as she withdrew her hands from his, took a deep breath and resumed telling him what she could about her husband.

During the ensuing couple of hours Al patiently listened to Tommie's frequently halting and plainly anxious, scared explanations and descriptions of her life as Derek Emerson's wife, wisely choosing not to interrupt. When he, and a couple of times, Verbena, did ask questions, each couched their questions with carefully chosen words. As Tommie talked, the Observer and chief psychiatrist could see her body language relaxing as she answered, her voice becoming steadier as her control became incrementally stronger. At last, however, a point finally came when it was clear that Tommie's brief resurgence of confidence was waning. Looking to Verbena, Al took his cue from her, and stood up from the chair and stepped to the side of the bed. Gently he placed a hand on her shoulder, not letting it show in his eyes that he'd felt the mild tremble that swept through her body at what was meant as a show of encouragement. He smiled when Tommie's blue eyes met his gaze.

"I can only imagine how difficult that was for you, Tommie," Al said quietly. "But I promise you that it will…help to start to make things easier…and safer for you when you return home." The small hesitant smile that appeared on the Visitor's face was response enough for him. Giving her shoulder a light pat, Al urged gently, "Rest now," and turned to leave but stopped when he felt a hand touch his arm. Glancing at the Visitor's hand on the sleeve of his jacket, Al looked at Tommie. He didn't say anything immediately, just watched her run the tip of her tongue over her lips before speaking.

Looking up at the older man who in one way reminded her of her father, Tommie hesitated then blurted, "Whatever you do, don't ever tell Derek 'no'. It makes him so angry sometimes I think he could..."

"Kill?" Al spoke the ominous word gently but clearly, never taking his eyes off Tommie's face.

There was no taking back the words she had just said, so Tommie Emerson held a little tighter to the growing bud of confidence inside, answering, " I... I don't know. But the first time I told him 'no', after we were married, he...beat me. Then he said something...odd."

"What did he say?" Al knew by the look in her eyes that she was thinking about something as she said, "He said that people who look down their noses at others sometimes live to regret it." In less time than it took to recall them, he saw again in his mind's eyes the photographs Ziggy had been able to obtain from the coroner's report on Sharon Allegretti Kramer, the sickening pictures of Sharon Kramer's horribly disfigured face when her murderer had sliced off her nose. _So she couldn't look down it at Derek, even in death_ the chilling thought lingered in the Observer's thoughts even as he focused on the terrified young wife now looking up at him. "Is there anything else you remember?" he asked quietly. Al felt his guts tighten when Tommie said, "If you confront him about anything and his shoelaces come untied, don't let him re-tie them."

"Why not?"

"Because he keeps a small switchblade strapped to his right leg just above his ankle." She swallowed then added, "He says it's for protection."

Al nodded as he reached to pat her hand. "Thank you, Tommie," he said then turned and walked away. The Waiting Room doors had just slid open when Al froze in his steps when Tommie called out, her voice still hesitant but decidedly stronger than when he had first come in a little over two hours ago.

"They…they're in his closet…in a little locked box. It's on the shelf under some sweaters."

Al turned where he stood, his eyes going directly to Tommie Emerson's face. "What's in the box? Tell me, Tommie. What's in the little locked box?" Al's concern for his best friend started to rocket when Tommie answered.

"I've never seen inside it," Tommie said slowly. "But he sometimes brags about them…after he beats me. Sometimes he threatens that if I don't do what he says…"

Al interrupted her, his voice quiet, his tone firm. "Tell me what's in the box, Tommie."

The blood chilled in his veins as he watched the Visitor lick her lips before whispering, "That's where he keeps his…trophies."

He just nodded then continued out of the Waiting Room, Verbena close on his heels. In the hallway, once the doors had resealed and far enough away from the Marine guards posted to guard the Waiting Room, he and Verbena stopped as if of one accord and looked at each other. He glanced as his watch, saying, "I'm going to check on Sam."

Verbena nodded. "I'll go back in and talk to Tommie a little more," she told him. Her words ended the conversation between them as each focused on what they needed to do. Neither one had to voice the fact that each had a strong feeling that the estimated timeframe for this leap had been drastically shortened, those feelings having been enhanced by what the Visitor had just told them.

As he headed for the Control Room, Al said aloud, "Ziggy, have the Imaging Chamber brought online. I'll be there in five minutes." As he approached the end of the long hallway and made the right turn he asked, "How's Sam's brainwave activity? What about his vital signs?"

"Shortly after your last contact with Dr. Beckett, his vitals signs and brainwave activity increased somewhat, but they returned to a normal pattern after about thirty minutes."

Al thought back to that last visit and murmured, "Probably about the time he went to see the cops," then quickly asked, "Where's Sam right now?"

Ziggy didn't miss a beat. "At present, Dr. Beckett is performing the Visitor's duties as a member of one of Sparkle & Shine's cleaning teams. According to the business' records for his current date and time, they finished cleaning the first of two houses assigned to that team for that date approximately an hour ago, after which they stopped for lunch."

Making one more turn at the end of this particular hallway, Al glanced up and saw the Control Room door and hastened his steps toward it. "Are they on the way to their second assignment?" he asked as he reached the door into the Control Room. Placing his hand on the electronic palm identification plate affixed to the wall beside the door, he asked, "When are they supposed to arrive at the second location?" The door opened and Al entered briskly, aware of but not pausing to glance at the beehive rate of activity that was always the norm during any leap. Instead, he went straight to the main control panel where Gooshie handed him a charged handlink.

"Admiral," Gooshie called out to get the Observer's attention as he crossed to the ramp leading up to the Imaging Chamber.

Al paused at the base of the ramp, turning to look at the chief programmer. "Yeah, Gooshie, what is it?"

"I thought you should know that, per your orders, we've been monitoring Derek Emerson's life signs." Seeing Al do an about face and return to face him, Gooshie decided not to wait for the demand to come at him. "About an hour ago, Mr. Emerson's brainwave activity increased in intensity…"

"What?" Al exclaimed, his tone sharp. "Why wasn't I notified immediately?"

Gooshie added hurriedly, "It was very brief…"

"How brief?" Al demanded. From the instant this leap had begun, he had learned that any change whatsoever to do with Derek Emerson was ample reason for immediate concern.

Gooshie blinked and licked his lips lightly before saying, "About five minutes, but," he rushed on, "he wasn't anywhere near Dr. Beckett at the time." When the Observer didn't say anything, just kept his gaze pinned on him, Gooshie glanced at the control panel and skimmed his fingers over a series of buttons rapidly. "In fact, by Ziggy's calculations, Dr. Beckett was approximately twenty miles from Derek's location during those few minutes." Gooshie looked at Al again, hoping that the additional information would get the other man's fixed and narrowly considering stare off of him.

"You're positive?" Al demanded.

"Are you questioning my calculations, Admiral Calavicci?" Ziggy asked, her tone miffed.

Al ignored the question, instead turning and continuing into the Imaging Chamber. "Ready," he called out when he was in position and the door was sealed. Within seconds a swirling column of time past sprang up around him. Just about as fast, he heard Gooshie's voice over the intercom in the Imaging Chamber, "We have a lock."

As the white walls of the Imaging Chamber began to fade and a holographic image of his best friend's current location began to come into focus, he heard Ziggy say, "Admiral, Dr. Beckett's brainwave activity and life signs are escalating at an alarming rate." All the Observer could do for the next few seconds was stare, a knot of fear clenched in his stomach as the reason for Ziggy's comments came into gut-wrenching, frightening clarity.


	17. Chapter 17

WALKING WITH ACHILLES

Chapter 16

The drive out to Vista Views Golf & Country Club had been pleasant in spite of how the bright sunshine gradually disappeared behind high gray clouds that signaled the approach of an early summer rain storm, weather typical to the area. Even the 'shop talk' that went on between Boo Lanson and Siena Jackson concerning the reason for the visit didn't detract from the brief journey. Intermittent raindrops began to spatter on the windshield as Boo turned off the main road and drove up the long lane between beautifully manicured expanses of green lawns. During the brief trip up that lane, Siena appreciated the view of the tastefully impressive looking clubhouse, understanding why Boo had said, "If you have to ask how much the membership fee is, take it to the bank, you can't afford to join."

Their ensuing conversation with Terry Schimmel, the club manager had lasted only about fifteen minutes, and by the time the manager was walking them back to the front door, chatting amiably, Siena's attitude about Tommie Emerson had recanted a bit. She had just nodded thoughtfully when told, "I'm sorry you drove all the way out here without getting to talk to Derek."

Siena just smiled politely and shook his hand, thanking him for his time. She paused for an instant when, as Terry Schimmel opened the door, a low distant rumble of thunder caused all of them to glance out at the lowering gray skies, noticing how the row of decorative evergreens lining the lane had begun to sway and stir in response to the breeze kicked up by the rainstorm. Yet Siena had barely stepped through the door when she stopped so quickly that Boo, following her, had to sidestep to avoid running into her when she turned back to the manager.

"Just one more thing. Does Mr. Emerson give lessons to any of the members?" she asked.

Terry Schimmel chuckled genially, sparing only a passing glance outward at the soft, steady rainfall then looked to the detectives once more. "Oh, yes," he said with a grin. "Among others, he teaches a class on Saturday mornings for kids between the ages of ten and fifteen."

"What about private lessons?" Siena asked.

"Yes, he does," Terry Schimmel answered, stepping out onto the covered portico and drawing the door closed. "Right now, he's giving private lessons to Gordon Whitestone and Allison Kent."

Boo Lanson hadn't missed his partner's switching tacks, paying close attention to Siena's expression and questions.

"Have you seen either of them today?" Siena queried.

Mr. Schimmel smiled. "Gordon definitely not yet today, and from the looks of it, he'll have to make up today's lesson. Weatherman says this rain is supposed to last well into the evening. Anyway, Gordon's a high school junior. He comes out three afternoons a week after school to work with Derek. Derek believes he may one day have a shot at going pro. I have to say that I agree with him."

Siena nodded. "What about Miss Kent?"

The manager thought a moment then shook his head in a slow, considering manner. "No, I don't think I've seen her since…yesterday." The man's smile broadened as he nodded more firmly. "Yes, she was here in the morning with another club member to play tennis. Actually, Allison comes to the club about three or four times a week."

"How long has she been taking private lessons with Mr. Emerson?" Siena asked.

The club manager frowned lightly. "About…six months, maybe seven."

"How often does she take lessons with Mr. Emerson?"

Terry Schimmel smiled widely. "I think about twice a week." To the detective's immediate follow up question, "You don't know how often?" he replied, "Detective Jackson, Miss Kent signed up for the lessons here, but she also has her own private nine-hole golf course on her estate." Arching his eyebrows significantly, he added, "She prefers her private lessons to be very private."

Siena nodded her understanding, having heard similar inferences many times in the course of investigating other cases before this one. "Just one more question, Mr. Schimmel," she said. "Where is Miss Kent's estate?"

"When you get to the road," the man told them, glancing toward the long drive.

"Turn right and go about five miles. You can't miss it."

Thanking the club manager again for his cooperation, Boo Lanson followed his partner back to their car. A clap of thunder boomed as he opened the door and slid behind the wheel. Putting the key in the ignition, he started the engine then paused, giving his partner a close look. "I'm starting to recognize that look," he said.

The comment snagged Siena's attention, causing her to shift her gaze from the notes she'd jotted in her notebook. "Hmm?" she responded then shook her head slightly as she focused on Boo as he backed the car up then shifted gears and started down the long lane toward the main road. "What are you talking about?"

Boo spared her a glance as he drove. "That look that says something's brewing behind those brown eyes." He paused then verbally nudged, "So?"

Siena stared at her notes another second before looking over at him. "It just seems odd that Mr. Schimmel says that Derek Emerson's has never displayed any sort of anger about anything or toward anyone at the club."

Boo considered the statement as he reached the main road and checked for oncoming traffic before flipping the turn signal on and turning right. "Your point?"

Siena looked at him. "My father loves golf. Plays two or three times a week." She glanced at the passing scenery. "I remember one time, when I was about ten, he tried to get my mom interested it. One Saturday he took her out in our backyard and tried teaching her about putting." She paused. "My Dad is one of the most patient men I've ever known in my life. But, Mom's never been remotely sports-minded." Siena shook her head, a bit of a smile touching her lips. "I'll spare you the details, but after about two hours, both of them were snapping at each other."

Boo just nodded.

Siena went on. "We both know that, no matter how hard they try or how enthusiastic they are, or how great a teacher they have, there are just some people who just can't get the hang of that sport. Teaching... anybody, anything requires patience…a lot of it…but even the most patient person in the world is going to lose it from time to time." She paused to take a breath then finished her thought. "A big part of Derek Emerson's job is teaching people to play golf, not all of whom, you can bet, are any good at it. Yet in all the time he's been at Vista Views, nobody has ever seen or heard of him losing his temper or even saying a cross word to anyone."

Busy with driving, Boo glanced at Siena again then shifted his attention back to the road. Scanning ahead, he pointed when he saw a large black mailbox with the name "Kent" printed on the side near a high-arching black wrought iron gateway marking the entrance to the Kent property. "There it is." As they drew closer, he said, "Again, what's your point?"

"My point," Siena said. "Is that for a guy who's had several incident calls to his house over the last five years, added to the way Thomasina Emerson looked this morning when I was talking to her, I find it highly unusual that no one at that club has ever heard Derek Emerson say a cross word." She paused a moment before adding, "Even more unusual is that, from what you said back at the station, all those calls to the Emerson house were about Mrs. Emerson, not Derek." Feeling the car slowing Siena shifted her attention forward. Up ahead she saw a white van with a large, bright logo on the side emerge from the arched iron gateway and make a left turn, passing them as it headed back the direction the detectives had come. Siena spared the van an idle glance as it went by, but no sooner had she looked away from it than she shifted sharply in her seat to look backward at the van.

"What's the matter?" Boo asked at his partner's sudden reaction to the van.

"Sparkle & Shine is the company Mrs. Emerson works for," Siena told him, her gaze still riveted on the van retreating down the road behind them. "What were they doing out here?"

Boo glanced at his partner then glanced in the rearview mirror. "It's a cleaning service, so I assume they were out here cleaning Allison Kent's house."

Siena's instincts were starting to clamor at her. "Turn around," she ordered.

"What for?" Boo asked, his own mindset shifting to a higher, more probing level by his partner's reaction.

"When she was leaving, Thomasina told me that she had to get to work," Siena's words were clipped as Boo Lanson executed a sharp U-turn in the road and headed quickly after the van now about a quarter of a mile ahead of them. Glancing at the seasoned detective beside her, she added, "Call it serendipity or what you will, but I just find it…odd that just as we're arriving to talk to a woman connected to Derek Emerson, a van belonging to the company his wife works for is pulling away from her estate."

Since the van wasn't fleeing from them, Boo waited until they had pulled up behind it before flipping the switch on the siren. It sounded twice and they watched the van's brake lights come on as it slowed then pulled off on the shoulder of the road and stopped. Both detectives jumped out of the car, Siena pulling out her ID as she took the lead in approaching the driver's side.

"I'm Detective Jackson," she said crisply, flipping her ID open for the clearly startled woman behind the wheel to get a good look at it. "This is my partner, Detective Lanson."

Getting a good look at the woman's badge number, Lilly Teasdale nodded as she met the detective's level gaze. "Is there a problem, officer?" she said carefully. "I was doing the speed limit..."

Siena put her ID back in her pocket. "There's no problem, ma'am," Siena said quickly. "I'm sorry, we didn't mean to scare you." She gave the driver a second to absorb that then said, "We were just on our way to the Kent estate when we saw you pull out."

Lilly nodded, glancing at Patricia Devlin in the seat beside her. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed Anna Wheaton seated in the backseat behind Patricia then looked back at detective watching her avidly. "Yes, ma'am," she responded politely. "We finished about fifteen minutes ago."

"Do you come out here on a regular basis?" Siena asked.

Lilly gave a vague shrug. "I wouldn't say it's a regular basis," she said. "But whenever Mrs. Corkern calls the agency, she always asks for our team."

"Who's Mrs. Corkern?"

"Oh, she's Miss Kent's housekeeper," Lilly supplied quickly.

Siena ducked reflexively at another clap of thunder, this one seeming like it was directly over them, then glanced at Boo then back to Lilly Teasdale then past her, craning her neck to see the other occupants of the van. "Who are they?" she asked, nodding as the other two women quickly identified themselves. Shifting back to the driver, she asked, "Is this your whole team - the three of you?"

"No," Lilly said. "There's another girl who works with us, but…"

Siena wasn't shy about stepping up to the van and craning her head to get a closer look in the back seat. When she didn't see another person, she demanded, "But what? What's her name?"

Lilly glanced from the female detective to her partner then back to the woman, her pulse starting to beat faster. She'd never had a problem with the police, not so much as a parking ticket, but this was starting to make her wonder. Swallowing quickly, she licked her lips and forced herself to stay calm and speak in the same manner. "Her name is Tommie Emerson…"

"Thomasina Emerson?" Boo said, his own instincts having begun to rise up as he'd listened to Siena questioning the woman behind the wheel.

Lilly darted a look at him, nodding immediately. "Yes, sir, but we call her Tommie."

"I spoke with her earlier today," Siena said. "She said she was going to work. Where is she?"

That question managed to ease a bit of Lilly's nerves as she answered it. "Oh, she worked today, though, we all thought she should have taken the day off the way she looked."

"Where is she?"

Lilly managed a bit of a smile. "Oh, well, her husband came out to meet us," she said. "We were just putting our stuff in the van when he drove up." She divided a look between the detectives. "It was easy to see that he was concerned about her. That's why he came all the way out here to pick her up and take her home." Her smile widened for a moment as she shook her head. "Tommie wasn't going to go with him, but," she nodded her head toward her companions. "I…we all told her to go ahead and go with him. I told her that I would clock her out." Her smile lessened a bit. "Poor dear, she's probably afraid that she might lose her job, but believe me, that's not going to happen. There's no way that Mr. Groves…he owns the company…is going to let her go over going home a little bit early. Tommie is a very good worker."

The longer the woman talked, the more insistently Siena's instincts clamored until, at this moment, inside her head it was like a claxon blaring a warning. Still, she forced herself to keep her tone and manner professional, if a little sharp. "How long ago did Mrs. Emerson leave with her husband?" she asked.

"Oh, they should be right behind us," Lilly said. "I saw Derek helping her into their car as we drove away."

"I saw their car," Patricia supplied, indicating the outside rearview mirror mounted on the passenger side of the van. "I looked at the mirror just when Lilly turned onto the road. They were just a little ways behind us."

As he listened to what the woman was saying, Boo Lanson turned his head to look back the way they had just come. The action was just quick enough to glimpse the edge of something shiny slip beyond the entrance to the Kent property. The hairs on the back of his neck began to bristle as he realized that what he had seen looked like the bumper of a vehicle. Sparing a lightning fast look down the long, straight stretch of road in the opposite direction from where he stood, Boo scanned for but didn't see any sort of vehicle driving away. Turning back to the driver of the van, he interrupted his partner. "You wouldn't happen to know what kind of car Mr. Emerson drives, would you?" he demanded.

"It's a Chevy. A red Chevy," Patricia piped up.

"You sure about that?" Boo asked, ducking his head slightly to look past the driver to Patricia.

"Oh yeah," Patricia nodded vigorously. "My brother's got a green one just like it, only it doesn't look no where near as good as theirs does."

Boo nodded; he didn't need to hear more. "Thanks for your help, ladies," he said firmly, glancing at his partner when she said, "What is it?" Boo's gaze went back to the driver and he smiled at her, saying, "Sorry to have delayed you. You can go," then turned and headed back to the car.

Siena hurried after her partner, sliding into the passenger seat and slamming the door at the same moment the car's engine roared to life. Quickly she braced a hand on the dashboard as Boo Lanson executed another sharp U-turn and sped back toward the entrance to the Kent estate. "What is it?" she demanded.

Boo's focus never wavered as they rapidly approached then reached the high, arched black wrought iron gateway marking the entrance to Allison Kent's estate and turned in.

"While you were talking to that lady," he said, his tone indicating the intensity of his thoughts and focus as he maneuvered the car carefully along the long winding driveway, overarched by huge old oak trees. "I looked back this way just in time to see something that looked like a car bumper disappear inside the gate."

Siena's pulse beat faster. "You saw Emerson's car pull in here?"

Boo shook his head, his eyes scanning up ahead. "I can't swear that it was Emerson's car, but whoever it was, I don't think that car was just pulling in."

"Then what?" Siena demanded, sparing a glance out the windshield. She frowned instantly when she saw that instead of following the blacktop drive up to the front of Allison Kent's home, her partner had turned off onto a narrow graveled road at the edge of the main lawn leading around toward the back of the property. "Where are you going?"

It was as if the weather had sensed and was matching Boo Lanson's thoughts, as he drove along the well maintained golf cart path. He spared a glance at his partner then back to his driving.

"I think that the bumper I saw might have been the front bumper of Emerson's car." He nodded without looking when Siena caught her breath. "You're sure?"

"I'd bet you lunch on it because I didn't see any taillights."

"But why would he follow them out to the gate then back up?" Siena wondered. The words were barely out of her mouth when it clicked. "Wait. Didn't Terry Schimmel say that Allison Kent has her own private golf course on the property?"

"Yep," Boo replied, slowing a bit to negotiate a somewhat sharp turn. "And if my thinking's right, there's a little bayou…the Petit Lis…that runs through this area." He glanced at his partner, seeing that she'd grasped his inference instantly even before he voiced it. "And what better place to dispose of a body than in a bayou, especially if it happens to run through private property that you have free access to as a golf pro giving private lessons to that property's owner?"

Siena's thoughts were running at breakneck speed as she followed her partner's reasoning, agreeing at every point of it. Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted when Boo braked suddenly, and she put a hand up to brace on the dashboard. "What…" she began then followed his gaze out the windshield, peering through the steady downpour of rain, her dark eyes widening slightly and her pulse increasing at the sight of a red Chevy Caprice stopped in the middle of the narrow golf cart path a couple of hundred yards straight ahead of them.


	18. Chapter 18

**WALKING WITH ACHILLES**

Chapter 17

Upon entering the Sparkle & Shine establishment, Sam's initial nervousness about Derek was put aside for the most part. His focus at that moment became the young woman behind the narrow counter who looked up when the bell over the door chimed and immediately rushed around the counter to him, her expression both shocked and sympathetic.

"Tommie, darlin' what happened?" Cissy Cronkite gasped as she lightly took the leaper by the shoulders and peered closely at his face. Sam's response was muffled as he was enveloped in a gentle hug for a moment before being released and Cissy put an arm around his shoulders to lead him to the door that led into the back area of the business. There, in the small locker room he was immediately surrounded by several other women of various ages, all of them wearing Sparkle & Shine uniforms identical to the one he wore.

The moment she got a good look at Tommie Emerson's face, Lilly Teasdale, a middle-aged woman with short, tight dark curly hair with a liberal sprinkling of gray and snapping blue eyes, hurried across the small room to the youngest member of the cleaning team she headed. Getting close to her team member, Lilly demanded, albeit gently, "Tommie, what happened? My gawd, hon, you look like you been dragged under a bus!"

Though it was a lie, it was the one Sam knew and stuck with it, adding only the embellishment that Derek had given it at the time it happened. "I…," he managed a small sheepish laugh, shaking his head carefully a couple of times. "I was standing on a chair to reach a can of peaches on the top shelf in the kitchen yesterday and…" He chuckled weakly, hating the lie. "And when I reached for it, I overbalanced and the chair tipped and I…hit the corner of the counter when I fell."

As the group of women clustered around him, expressing their sympathy, a couple of them giving him a gentle hug, as he reassured them that, yes, he had been to see a doctor, it was the safest and most secure that Sam had felt since he'd opened his eyes at the beginning of this leap. It was like he could feel the women's sympathy and expressions of comfort and suggestions for how to ease the discomfort of his injures seeping through his skin. That encouragement came in handy a few minutes later when Jerry Groves, the owner and manager of Sparkle & Shine entered the locker room to hand out cleaning location assignments to the leaders of the five, four-person teams on duty today.

While a businessman through and through, it was well known to his employees, that Jerry Groves really cared about them as individuals, and upon seeing Tommie Emerson's battered appearance, he did his level best to get her to take the day off. It had taken Sam several earnest minutes of talking under the intense but caring gazes of a roomful of Tommie's co-workers to convince Mr. Groves that, in spite of his appearance, that he was quite capable of performing Tommie's duties for the day's assignments and wanted to so. A dozen or so sets of eyes were all fixed on him as he, when prompted, dug in his purse for the medical release from Tommie's doctor. Handing it to Tommie's boss, Sam then heaved a very unsubtle sigh of relief at the man's decision to allow him to work the shift. It had encouraged him even a little more when Jerry Groves had given Lilly Teasdale a pointed look before shifting his gaze back to him, saying, "The only provision I'll make to my decision, Tommie, is that if at any time you feel unwell, that you advise your team leader who will bring you back here immediately so that you can get medical attention."

"Yes, sir, I'll do exactly that," Sam promised with a grateful smile. Right now, the last thing he wanted to do was to return to the Emerson house if he didn't absolutely have to do so.

The teams dispersed a few minutes later to their various cleaning assignments. At his team's first of two assignments, Sam's injuries worked to his advantage, in that Lilly gave him the least physically stressful task, sending him to tidy the kitchen, including unloading and loading the dishwasher. Even when gently reminded by Patricia, one of the other team members, that he had to scrub the kitchen floor on his hands and knees, it didn't daunt Sam. As it turned out, the simple tasks and physical exercise relaxed him, giving him time to ponder on exactly how he was going to put an end to Derek Emerson's killing spree

For lunch the team stopped at a small family-type restaurant, hurrying through the lightly drizzling rain. There, much to the surprise of his teammates, Lilly, Patricia and Anna, Sam ordered then proceeded to polish off a six-inch roast beef po'boy along with a side of potato salad and a large glass of Coke. Compared to his companions and their smaller club sandwiches on toast and bowls of seafood gumbo, Sam ate like the proverbial lumberjack. Popping the last spoonful of potato salad in his mouth, he couldn't help blushing when Patricia had teased, "Girl, I ain't never seen you eat like that. Don't tell me you're already eatin' for two now." The others had laughed heartily when Sam immediately blurted, "No way!" a sheepish grin slowly appearing on his face.

By the time the team reached the Kent estate, their second assignment, the rain was coming down at a steadier rate, and the grayish thick overlay of clouds had darkened ominously. Yet even a spring rainstorm wasn't allowed to deter a Sparkle & Shine cleaning team, and promptly at one thirty p.m., Lilly Teasdale led her team to the door at the back of the house, near the kitchen, where Jane Corkern, housekeeper for Allison Kent for eight years, was waiting to admit them. Upon seeing Sam's battered face, and with point blank frankness, Jane turned to Lilly and asked, "Is she up to working today?"

"Of course, Tommie's up to the job," she stated, her tone firm as she looked the housekeeper in the eye. "We've already finished one assignment today, ma'am, and Tommie didn't miss a beat."

That had been good enough for Jane Corkern. "All right," she pronounced, giving the battered leaper another quick look up and down before shifting her mind to the business at hand.

"There aren't any special jobs that need doing today," she informed Lilly as she cast an eye toward Sam and the other two women as they waited for specific assignments. "Just the usual," she added unnecessarily. "When Miss Allison gets back from wherever she gallivanted off to last night, I just want everything…"

"Sparkling and shining?" Lilly suggested lightly, her blue eyes twinkling with a hint of humor. She just nodded when she saw the housekeeper's lips twitch a bit before she chuckled slightly as Jane simply agreed, "Yes." It was clear that this wasn't the first time such a friendly exchange had happened between the housekeeper and the particular cleaning team she requested each time she called Sparkle & Shine. Glancing around one last time, Jane Corkern nodded then went on about her other tasks.

To Sam, every room in Allison Kent's sprawling home that he stepped into, looked spic and span and polished to within an inch of every surface's life. But a job was job, and for the next three hours, he forgot about Derek as he helped Patricia dust and vacuum every room on the main floor of the house. His last task was to polish the entire curving length of the dark mahogany banisters of the sweeping "open fan" staircase in the main foyer. Finally he reached the foot of the staircase again, gave the ornately carved newel post one last brisk rub with the polishing cloth then turned and surveyed the result of his hard work. He'd just chuckled and grinned, wincing when the healing splits on his lower lip twinged when he did so, when he heard Lilly's voice behind him, saying, "Any fly trying to land anywhere on either of those banisters is going to go into a skid and slide right off the other side of it and break its neck!"

Lilly Teasdale had, as required of the team leader, inspected every room and area that the team touched. She had also kept a fairly close eye on the person she thought was Tommie Emerson, but after about an hour, was satisfied that the young woman was okay to work alone and set about her own tasks. Now, she turned at the sound of footsteps, seeing Patricia and Anna coming toward her and chatting with the housekeeper, and went to meet them.

"I trust everything is to your satisfaction, Mrs. Corkern?" Lilly inquired, smiling as she double-checked the work order then presented it to the housekeeper for her signature.

Jane Corkern took the work assignment order, signed it and handed it back to Lilly, smiling. "As always, Lilly. You and your team always do the finest job every time. Everything just shines so much it almost hurts my eyes to look around." The words had barely left her lips when…….

BOOM!

All five of them jumped, nearly of one accord at the huge clap of thunder. It was more than enough to bring them back to the moment. "Sounds like that storm's getting' ready to start really kicking up," Anna said.

Lilly nodded. "Are all of the equipment and supplies back in the van?" she asked, her manner back to business again. She nodded when Anna confirmed that she and Patricia had just finished. "Good," she said. "Then we better get a move on. Maybe we'll get lucky and beat the worst of that storm to town."

Sam followed his teammates back through the house to the kitchen and from there to the back entrance. He brought up the rear of the small group as they filed out the door, nodding and smiling at the housekeeper as he passed her. Turning, he looked out the door to see Anna standing there, waiting for him and holding her open umbrella out for him to share with her, a broad smile on her face.

"What?" Sam said lightly as he stepped out the door and under the umbrella. Behind him, he heard the door being closed and locked, but Sam was focused on how Anna's gaze darted to something behind him then met his gaze again. The twinkle in her eyes told him something was up as he turned to see what was so funny. That suspicion was only confirmed when he saw Lilly and Patricia already at the van, each under her own umbrella, a vaguely mischievous little smile on each one's face as he and Anna walked quickly through the rain to the van. Upon reaching the other two women, Sam, ready to take whatever teasing was about to come to him in stride, stopped when Anna did then fixed each of them with a good-natured suspicious eye. "Okay, what are you up to?" he demanded. "And before you say 'nothing'…don't." A sudden gust of wind blew strongly around them, driving the rain against Anna and Sam's backs, causing them to reflexively hunch their shoulders and wait for the wind to subside. Sam shivered and shoved his hands into his pockets. Looking around at the waiting women, the mischief in each one's expression still firmly in place, he added, "I'd sooner believe that it's not raining than that you three aren't up to something."

"We were just waiting for you, Tommie," Lilly said firmly, then turned to open the driver's door. "Come on you three, get in the truck already before we're all soaked to the skin."

Sam wasn't given an option of not doing as instructed, forced to turn quickly to keep pace with Anna and her umbrella as she turned and went around the back of the van while Patricia went around the front. A fleeting notion occurred to him that the expression of the young woman beside him reminded him of his sister, Katie, as child, when she was setting either he or Tom up for one of her pranks.

Hearing a door open and shut and as he and Anna rounded the end of the van and turned to go get into it, Sam looked up, still expecting to be confronted with some sort of teasing … and froze in his steps, his heart already in his throat.

"Hi, sweetheart," Derek said, the loving concern in his voice a perfect match for the smile on his lips as he quickly straightened up from his leaning position against the van to move past Patricia Devlin to get to his wife. Gripping the handle of a large green and white golf umbrella firmly, he went to Sam and deftly slipped his free arm behind the leaper's waist and gave him a little hug. Reading his wife's startled expression, Derek covered easily, "I know you said you were okay when I left the house this morning, honey. But I just couldn't stop thinking about you and worrying about you. So I called your job and the girl told me where you all were working. That's when I decided to surprise you and drive out to pick you up early." Giving his wife another little hug, Derek made a show of planting a kiss carefully on Sam's cheek nearest him then drew back to look lovingly into the leaper's eyes, saying softly for the other women's benefit, "I'm going to take you home and take good care of you, baby."

The moment 'Tommie' and Anna had started around the back of the van, Lilly had quickly closed the partially open driver's side door and hurried around the front of the van, ready to enjoy the unexpected surprise that had appeared for Tommie in the form of her handsome husband. Reaching Patricia and sharing a conspiratorial chuckle, her gaze shifted in the direction of the end of the van. No way was she going to miss the sight of Tommie's expression when she saw her husband.

All three women laughed delightedly at what they saw as Tommie Emerson's startled --but surely pleased-- expression when she beheld her husband. And when Derek Emerson had kissed her colleague's poor bruised face, a little thrill of satisfaction made Lilly shiver lightly all over and she and Patricia exchanged cat-in-the-cream grins. But those grins lost a tad of their brightness when Tommie started to speak.

The sideways hug, to those looking on, appeared to be a gentle and genuine embrace of affection. Had any one of the women on his Sparkle & Shine team been closer and their view not affected, even slightly, by the darkening overcast sky and the rain, they might have seen the way Sam's eyebrows knit for a second as he winced subtly when Derek's fingers dug into his side so hard that he felt the other man's fingernails through the knit material of his shirt. Being so face-to-face close, the leaper also saw beneath the concern in Derek Emerson's eyes to the anger and worse just waiting for a solitary moment to come out. For a second, as he looked into the veneer of Derek Emerson's caring concern, Sam was again back at the beginning of this leap and was afraid. But that near paralyzing fear was just as immediately displaced by the memory of besting Derek, albeit with the aid of a carving knife, but it was enough.

Licking his lips a bit, Sam forced himself to remain calm as he gave Derek a hesitant smile. "You're so thoughtful," he said lightly, placing his left hand over Derek's still painfully tight grip on his waist. "But I can't just leave now." He winced again, nibbling nervously at the inside of his lower lip as he watched the anger in Derek Emerson's eyes begin to darken. "Isn't that right, Lilly?" he shifted his gaze to the team leader anxiously.

Derek laughed lightly as he pulled his wife tighter against his side, and slid a beguiling, wheedling expression at Lilly Teasdale, turning up the 'volume' of his charm. "I'll bet, if you asked her, Lilly would clock you out…wouldn't you, Lilly?"

"Oh, no, no, I couldn't," Sam said, trying to remain calm as he managed to wiggle free of Derek's vise-like grip on his waist, but it wasn't quick enough to escape Derek's hand recapturing his wrist. "After all, I don't want to lose my job…or cause someone else to lose theirs, because I…wanted to go home a little early. Isn't that right, Lilly?" However, a glance at Lilly Teasdale's expression told Sam that the team's leader had succumbed to Derek's charm and masterful manipulation.

"Oh for sure, honey," Lilly assured Derek. "No problem at all." Turning a genuine look of caring concern on her young colleague, Lilly smiled and said, "Now you just run along home, Tommie, and let your hubby fuss over you and take care of you." Nudging Patricia subtly with her elbow, Lilly added, "After some TLC and a good night's sleep, I'll bet you beignets to king cake that when you wake up in the morning, you're gonna feel so much better."

Taking advantage of Lilly Teasdale's comments, and with practiced ease, Derek used Sam's balance against him. Keeping a firm grip on the handle of the large golf umbrella he held, Derek deftly pulled the leaper back then slid his arm quickly around Sam's waist, hugging him familiarly back against himself. Determined to keep the other members of his wife's work team firmly on his side, Derek leaned in a bit to press his cheek to the side of Sam's head then made a show of nuzzling near his ear. With his mouth thus obscured from the other women, he whispered menacingly under his breath, "Quit stalling you two-timing bitch, and get in the car!"

"B..but…" Sam stammered softly, his heart thudding against his ribs.

Derek's rage was rising but he kept a steely grip on it. Laughing softly, he kissed the spot behind Sam's ear again, hissing, "If you don't want me to keep my promise to you right here…"

"P..promise?" Sam murmured, too intent on trying to get away from Derek that he didn't see how Lilly and Patricia both twittered behind their hands and exchanged winks when they heard what Sam said.

"Yeah," Derek hissed softly. "About Main Street?"

In a split second, Sam's memory of the leap in flashed through his mind, hearing yet again Derek's cold, emotionless threat of a little over twenty-fours ago: _"I'll gut you, you worthless whore, and dump your body in the middle of Main Street."_

There wasn't a grain of doubt in the leaper's mind that Derek Emerson wouldn't hesitate to carry out his 'promise'. For as much as the cold-blooded killer at his back frightened him –commonsense dictated that only a fool wouldn't be afraid—he was more concerned that if he didn't comply, that Derek would take out his rage on the three innocent, unsuspecting women watching them. No…four, counting the housekeeper, who would likely come running when the screaming began.

Forcing himself to pretend to give in, Sam pasted on a hesitant smile as he gave a couple of quick, tight little nods. Casting his gaze at Lilly for a second, Sam turned his head vaguely to glance at Derek's face next to his own. "Okay," he said softly. "You…you're both right. I guess I will feel better after a…good night's sleep." Vaguely he heard the women voicing their approval, but all he saw were Derek's cold eyes above his perfect smile. Sam made himself react appropriately as Derek continued to act the part of a concerned and loving husband, though he knew good and well that once Derek got him alone the loving husband persona would be discarded and the ugliness that was Derek Emerson's anger and rage would explode.

"Smart girl," Derek hissed behind Sam's ear as in the next moment his manner, tone and expression morphed into the mask that was the face he showed the world. "That's my girl," he said with a pleased smile, shifting position a bit so he was once again standing beside the leaper. Quickly he moved his arm behind Sam's waist, his fingers once more digging hard into the leaper's side. Glancing around at the women, he nodded to each then deftly turned Sam and headed back toward the corner of the house.

"Where are we going?" Sam whispered through dry lips as he walked woodenly beside Derek through the now steadier downpour.

"I parked the car over here on the side," Derek said. At the corner of the house, his hand now gripping Sam's upper arm tightly, he moved around the corner of the house and immediately the red Chevy Caprice came in sight. They had just reached the car and Derek had opened the passenger side door and was about to shove Sam in when the Sparkle & Shine van came slowly around the corner as the crew headed back to town.

"Smile and wave at them," Derek hissed, turning his head so that the occupants of the van couldn't see his face. Seeing the hesitation on his wife's face, he growled, naked menace in his voice and eyes, "Do it!"

Sam did what he was told, nodding lightly as he gave a tiny wave as the van moved past them. The van had barely started down the wide curving driveway that led down to the main road when Derek, still mindful that a glimpse in a rearview mirror by the van's driver might cause suspicion if he were seen being anything but kind to his wife, snarled, "Get in the car." He furled the umbrella, reaching inside the open car door to toss it into the back seat. When Sam didn't move quickly enough to suit him, Derek grabbed him by the arm and physically forced Sam into the front seat of the car.

"Ahh!" Sam gasped, wincing when his temple collided with the car's frame as he was pushed into the car. While he was still bent over slightly toward the driver's seat, his right wrist was grabbed and he was jerked upright in his seat. "What…" It was all Sam got out before his head snapped sharply to the left as Derek managed a backhanded slap within the close confines of the car's front seat area.

"Shut up!" Derek bellowed furiously as he grabbed Sam's other wrist. Holding both of the momentarily dazed leaper's wrists with one hand, he reached down and felt about under the seat and pulled out a length of rope. With the ease of much practice, Derek rapidly cinched three loops of the coarse rope tightly around Sam's wrists and tied a secure knot.

The bite of the hemp rope on his flesh was enough to help Sam fight through the last vestiges of the stunning backhand. "Derek, please…no…this isn't right."

"NOT RIGHT?" Derek yelled in his wife's clearly frightened face. "You wanna know what's not RIGHT, Tommie?" Grabbing the ends of the rope still dangling after securely tying the knots on her bound hands, Derek, jerked down on them, and when his 'wife's' body went with the hard yank, reached down and tied her bound wrists to her legs, cinching the ends of the rope tightly then tied it behind her knees.

"I'll damn well tell you what's not right," Derek shouted, his fury causing tiny droplets of spittle to fly from his lips and hit Sam's face. "What's not right is that because of her arrogant rich bitch attitude my mother denied me what was rightfully mine when my grandparents disowned me right along with her."

Derek continued to push his face closer and closer, forcing his wife to press back harder and harder against the seat until she couldn't go any farther back. Grabbing his wife's face with one hand, and forcing her chin up, he glared into her eyes and shouted, "She denied me my inheritance!" He saw the way she winced as his fingers clamped like a vise across her chin. Derek stared into her frightened eyes a moment longer before moving back a bit to fasten the seatbelt then straightened up and stepped back and slammed the door shut. Though fury coursed through his body at near the same speed as the blood in his veins, Derek still had his wits about him enough to cast wary glances around to discern whether or not anyone might have come out of the house and seen him. His luck, however, was holding – he didn't see anyone – and he went quickly around the car to slide behind the steering wheel of the Chevy Caprice. Twisting the key in the ignition, he put it into gear and backed up rapidly, then shifted into 'drive' and drove quickly down the winding drive. It took less than a minute for him to catch up to within a couple of hundred yards of the Sparkle & Shine van as it approached the main road. Slowing the car to a crawl in order to maintain the distance between the two vehicles, Derek eased the car forward very slowly as if preparing to turn as soon as he could get to the road, but he didn't turn. Instead he just remained stationary, ignoring the windshield wipers' ceaseless back and forth swiping, watching the large white van, it's left rear turn signal blinking as Lilly Teasdale steered it out onto the road, driving at a moderate rate of speed. The instant the van disappeared from his line of sight, just as a precaution, Derek eased the car forward just in time to catch sight of the rear of the van before it again disappeared from his line of sight as it move well beyond the wrought iron gateway. For a moment or so the only sound inside the Caprice was that of the windshield wipers steady swishing, the car's engine. Then, shifting the car into reverse, Derek turned slightly to watch as he steered the car into a reverse three-point turn. That accomplished, he shifted into drive again and started back up the driveway toward the house, then increased his speed a bit as he veered off onto a graveled path leading toward the nine-hole golf course situated back of Allison Kent's estate. Only then, as he steered the car forward did Derek slide a look over at his wife's ashen face then returned his gaze straight ahead.

"What's not right," he bit each word off sharply, focusing his attention on keeping the car on the graveled road as the rain came down even a little harder, "is when people's attitudes change and they look down their noses at you because you're not their equal anymore." Every word that spewed forth from the festering depths of Derek Emerson's outrage over how his life had turned out was hotter than its predecessor and steadily continued stirring his outrage to a fever pitch. Then in the next instant the moment that, for him, was the most mocking slap in the face seared across his memory and, without warning, he turned his head to glare hotly at his wife. Without warning, Derek drew back his right hand and delivered a vicious backhand slap to her head and causing her awkwardly bound figure to slam against the passenger side door, causing her to gasp in pain.

"What's not right," Derek shouted as he steered the car around one last curve before stamping on the brake pedal, thereby causing the rear of the car to fishtail slightly before coming to a full stop. "Is my wife two-timing me in my own house with some sonofabitch older than her own father!" Wrenching the key out of the ignition, he got out of the car and stalked around it.

In the midst of the pain from the backhanding, the still fresh memories of his earlier encounters with Derek Emerson's towering, murderous rage swirled inside Sam Beckett. Now, however it was the stronger memory of Al's scorching confrontation of his fear of this man that helped Sam to fight back the fear that was seeking to overwhelm him again. Though his heart was beating a staccato rhythm against his ribs, almost a match for the fresh pain throbbing in his head, as the car came to an abrupt halt, the memory of overcoming that fear aided Sam as he forced himself to not react to the tirade. He remained hunched—as much as being restrained by the seatbelt would allow—against the passenger side door, his head throbbing painfully. But Derek's comment just before he got out of the car sent a flood of icy realization through Sam as from within his whirling thoughts came a fleeting snippet of something Al had said to him during another leap: _"Animals, little kids and the mentally absent can see me."_…_ And now, the mentally unbalanced, too?_

"Oh my God," Sam gasped under his breath. Struggling to push himself into a more upright position; it was barely enough time for him to glimpse out the windshield to see Derek stalking around the car just seconds before the passenger side door was yanked open.

Being so close to Derek Emerson's face allowed the leaper to get a frighteningly clear view of the fury in the man's eyes and expression. In spite of every survival instinct in him shrieking for him to try to get away, Sam forced himself to not move as Derek unfastened the seatbelt, then reached down to untie the knotted rope behind his knees. When the ends of the rope were sufficiently loosened, his wrists still securely bound, Sam stumbled, almost falling when Derek hauled him out of the car. He was unable to suppress the full body shiver that swept over him, due in equals parts to the fear rampant within him, as well as the heavy downpour of rain soaking his clothes and plastering them to his body, as Derek wrapped the ends of the rope around Sam's body and pulled them tight before tying them tightly behind his waist. Sam winced, gasping lightly when the enraged man grabbed him by the upper arm, dragging him along as he marched around the front of the car, going up a short graveled path through an opening in a tall hedge off to the left of the road. Sam blinked his eyes rapidly in an attempt to clear them of the rain steadily dripping from his hair and being blown into his face by the wind stirred up by the storm. Squinting, he peered through the gloomy gray shrouding of heavy rain as he was force-marched beside Derek across what looked like could be a golf green.

He ducked his head involuntarily when another huge crash of thunder boomed uncomfortably close by. It was in those nanoseconds of illumination as the sky lit up with multiple flashes of lightning that his wondering of why Derek had brought him here was answered. As they reached an opening in the opposite side of the hedge ringing the green expanse they had crossed, Sam caught sight of a path leading down to what looked like a small stream overhung by the great tossing heads of the trees lining its banks. In another flash of lightning, he saw fleeting points of light reflected off tiny wavelets stirred up by the wind on the water's surface. It was in that instant as he was pulled and dragged along as they started down the rain-slicked, muddy path that he recalled Al's recitation to him of the few facts about Allison Kent's death. An icy chill not caused by the rain ran down his spine as one particular bit of information now began to loop through his mind as he again heard Al saying, _"According to a newspaper article, Allison Kent's mutilated body was discovered in the Petit Lis Bayou…it runs across the back of her estate." _It was more than enough to push Sam to balk at going further, stopping in mid-stride and trying to twist free of Derek's vise-like grip on his upper arm. "Derek…no!" Sam insisted as he began to struggle, nearly losing his footing on the muddy incline.

However, all that Sam's struggling and protests, especially one word in particular, succeeded in doing was to push Derek Emerson's temper beyond mere fury into white-hot rage. Maintaining a steely grip on the leaper's upper arm, Derek shoved his free hand into his pocket and pulled out a switchblade, the blade flicking open with smooth precision in less than a blink of an eye. Derek pressed the point of the blade against Sam's throat, the sting as the switchblade's razor sharp tip effortlessly nicked through the outer layer of the leaper's skin and caused Sam to freeze into immobility and silence as he winced.

"Do that again," Derek warned, the cold expression in his eyes matching his tone, "and I'll cut your throat right here, right now, Tommie." Staring intently into his wife's bruised face, Derek didn't miss the way her gaze broke from his for a second, looking beyond him before a bit of added pressure on the switchblade brought those scared blue eyes back to his. His gaze narrowed as he searched her face intently then, keeping his grip on her arm tight and maintaining just enough pressure on the switchblade at her throat, he half turned to peer intently, trying to see through the heavy downpour shrouding the expanse of the ninth hole. His gaze darted quickly, checking out the shadows along the hedge, even sparing a glance upward at the lofty pitching tops of the tall old oaks and pines towering above the hedge. Nothing he saw struck him as suspicious but that didn't stop him from turning back to Sam and giving the leaper a hard shake and growling, "What were you looking at?"

"N…nothing. I…I…I swear," Sam babbled, his insides now a twisted, coiling knot of fear.

Derek twisted around to look again. Ducking his chin slightly and tilting his head a bit so the rain missed his eyes as much as possible, he scanned the area as closely as the heavy rainfall would permit. For a second he thought he saw some sort of movement near the opening out to the road and he stared intently at it. Only when he saw a brownish colored rabbit hop through the opening and a few feet onto the green before veering off to disappear into the shelter of the hedge did Derek relax his intense scrutiny. Satisfied that only he and his soon to be dead wife were present, he turned and continued to haul his frightened and unwilling next victim down the path to the muddy bank of the Petit Lis Bayou.

If Derek hadn't been so intent on getting on with the disposal of his wife, when the next flash of lightning occurred, his rage might have enabled him to see what Sam had seen over his shoulder. Namely, the Imagining Chamber door opening and Al stepping out then freezing in his steps, his dark eyes getting big as saucers upon seeing the ominous intensity of his best friend's dicey situation.

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For the two detectives, the open front passenger side door of the red Chevy Caprice parked a couple of hundred yards ahead of them in the middle of the narrow graveled road pretty much confirmed that it was empty, but that was an assumption. Both knew that relying wholly on an assumption as an answer was not only irresponsible and shoddy police work, it could also be potentially dangerous.

Cutting offthe engine, Boo got out of the car, closing the door carefully as he drew his gun, automatically releasing the safety. He noted that the rain was coming down harder, yet barely noticed it soaking into his clothes as he moved forward, arms extended, weapon ready as he cautiously approached the driver's side door of the Caprice. Hearing a soft, quick step behind him, he glanced back to see his partner, her own weapon drawn, mirroring his actions as she neared the open passenger side door. Sharing a look, they moved in tandem, each remaining a couple of feet from the vehicle as they scanned the clearly empty front seat then peered into the backseat. Siena didn't say anything as she moved back then around the rear of the car to her partner who was peering through the rain, scanning their surroundings. When he pointed to the opening in the tall hedge about ten feet off the left side of the road, she nodded her understanding. Siena remained watchful of the area behind and around them as she followed her partner toward the opening in the hedge large enough to admit a golf cart. To the right of the opening she saw a small sign that indicated that the broad open expanse beyond the hedge was, in fact, the ninth hole of the estate's nine-hole golf course.

Under cover of another deep rumble of thunder, punctuated by multiple cracks of lightning as the storm intensified, they moved quickly to the left of the opening in the hedge. Staying close to the dense greenery, Boo Lanson carefully peered around the edge, his view partially obscured by the rain and the darkly overcast sky that made it seem more like twilight than a few minutes after four o'clock on a spring afternoon. He was just about to draw back when there was a sudden boom of thunder followed instantaneously by multiple cracks of lightning. Just as he ducked instinctively, the brief but brilliant flashes of lightning illuminated the ninth hole of Allison Kent's golf course but it wasn't the smooth green expanse that got his attention. Instead, Detective Boo Lanson's gaze was caught by something glinting in the flash from the lightning. Shifting his position so he was facing the hedge, he pressed close to it to remain hidden, staring in the direction where he'd seen the glint.

"What do you see?" Siena whispered, watching her partner's actions that told her there was something or someone within the area protected by the hedge.

Boo opened his mouth to whisper back to his partner when there was another flash of lightning. In that instant, he saw again the glint, light reflecting off something metallic. What snagged and held his attention was the sight of two figures moving through an opening in the opposite side of the hedge and disappearing into the shadows of the trees beyond it. Even through the downpour and gloom though, Boo saw something he recognized. One of the figures –the shorter of the two-- was wearing a blue shirt, a blue shirt whose color reminded him of the shirt worn by the driver of the Sparkle & Shine van. Without turning his head, he hissed tersely, "Call for backup." Before his partner could respond, Boo peered again across the green then slipped through the opening and began following the curve of the hedge around toward the opening through which the two figures had disappeared.

"What?" Siena whispered sharply but the word was spoken to the empty space previously occupied by her partner. She didn't waste another second, turning and hurrying back to their car to do as Boo had ordered. Giving the dispatcher their situation and location, Siena was out of the car and headed after her partner. At the edge of the opening, like Boo had done moments before, she glanced inside. Through the rain, her gaze was caught by something moving across the way from her. Focusing her eyes, she quickly realized that it was her partner she was seeing as he stealthily crept up to the opening in the hedge directly across from where she stood. In the next second, she, too, darted inside, keeping low and close to the hedge, hugging whatever shadowy spots she could as she hurried to her partner's aid.


	19. Chapter 19

WALKING WITH ACHILLES

Chapter 18

It was rare for Al to be so startled that he couldn't move immediately, especially where his best friend was concerned. Now was one of those moments, and he stood frozen in the Imaging Chamber, watching a remorseless killer with a deadly sharp switchblade at Sam's throat. Moving slowly, Al stepped through the Imaging Chamber door, not hearing it close behind him as his gaze immediately locked with Sam's. One wrong move, even a sneeze, any added pressure at all and the tip of that switchblade would open Sam's carotid artery in less than the space of a heartbeat. If that happened, there would be nothing Al could do but stand there and watch his best friend in the world bleed to death.

"No!" he spat the denial, watching the angry, revenge-driven Derek forcing Sam further down the muddy path toward the bank of the little bayou some forty or fifty feet from the hedge. "Not on my watch," he finished his vow fervently. Mashing buttons on the handlink, Al ordered, his tone as sharp as his determination, "Ziggy, keep me centered on Sam!" The words were hardly past his lips when he suddenly found himself standing some six feet from the edge of the Petit Lis Bayou. Glancing around to orient himself to the new location, Al spared a quick look up at the darkly overcast sky and the lofty, rustling treetops swaying and pitching overhead. Shifting his gaze toward the bayou, he squinted slightly, scanning the surface of the water being thickly peppered by the heavy rain, as well as the skittering rivulets driven by the wind stirred up by the storm fleeing across its top. All of that was noted then forgotten as Al caught sight of something in his peripheral vision, turning quickly to see Derek and Sam emerge from the short path of shadows leading down from the ninth hole of the golf course. Like iron shavings compelled by the nearness of a magnetic, so quickly did the leaper and observer's gaze find one another for an instant--but it was enough.

With one hand clamped tightly on Tommie's left arm and the other holding the switchblade at his wife's back, Derek forced her down the path. When she slipped a bit, he jerked at her arm, tightening his grip to the point that she whimpered at the vise-like pressure as he enabled her keep her footing. That lasted only until they were within a few feet of the water's edge where he abruptly shoved his wife to her knees in the mud. With effortless ease he applied pressure to the release lever on the side of the switchblade, causing the blade to disappear within the body of the instrument again then slipped it into his pocket. For a second, Derek glared down into his wife's clearly scared face, his eyes flitting to her bound hands secured to her trembling body. Cuffing the side of her head sharply in warning, Derek turned to stalk carefully down to the water's edge.

The instant Derek's back was turned, Al hurried to Sam, leaning down a bit toward his friend, looking pointedly at the leaper's bound hands. "Sam, what the hell is happening?" he demanded, keeping his voice somewhat low.

"Shhhh!" Sam hissed softly, his tone clearly desperate for the hologram to comply.

Al's eyebrows curved downward in a frown at being shushed. Darting a glance toward Derek who was just standing at the water's edge and looking out over it, he turned back to Sam just as the leaper whispered, "Because he knows you were in the house this morning."

"WH…." Al almost shouted, just managing to drop the volume of his reaction. "Sam, what do you mean he knows I was in the house?" Seeing the way Sam's gaze kept darting in the direction of the water, he demanded, albeit, in a whisper, "Talk to me before slime ball comes back."

Just having the hologram of his friend near him again helped Sam hang onto the determination not to capitulate to Derek's intimidation. Shaking his head a bit to clear the rain running into his eyes, he turned his head toward Al, tilting it slightly to look up at him. "I talked with the police…"

"How'd that go?"

Sam gave a quick sigh and let his breath out softly. "By the time I left there, I got the idea that the detective I talked to figured that I…Tommie wasn't quite all there," he answered in a sort of stage whisper. "After that I went to Tommie's job." Sam darted another glance toward Derek, who hadn't moved from where he stood at the water's edge, then again looked up at the hologram. As he looked at Al, he couldn't stop the shivering driven primarily by fear, but now added to by the clammy chill of his sodden clothes and the incessant rain keeping them soaked. The cold, however didn't have a chance to deter the leaper, and the fear, while strong, was slowly beginning to lose its grip as Sam started to speak, hesitating only for a second to get his chattering teeth under control before going on.

"After we finished at the second house," Sam whispered hurriedly, "when we went out to get in the van, Derek was waiting for me." His chin quivered and he gritted his teeth a moment to stop them chattering. "H..he laid it on thick for the other team members, saying he'd was worried about Tommie. That he wa..wanted to take her home and take good care of her. Then, on the way here, he was yelling about Tommie two-timing him with, as he put it, 'a man older than Tommie's…father.'" He saw the immediate understanding in Al's eyes. "When he said that, something you said during some other leap came back to me – about how little kids, animals and the mentally absent being able to see you. And…" he now indicated his bound wrists, "here I am. Uh oh," he murmured softly, his instincts shifting back into high gear as his gaze strayed back toward the water. Fear again set in, trying to reclaim supremacy over the leaper's mind, when Sam saw that while he was talking to Al, Derek had waded out about knee deep into the water, and was now bent over, his arms immersed up to his biceps, apparently searching for something beneath the surface. "What's he doing?"

Sam's reminder about a comment the Observer had made countless leaps ago, though it took a moment, brought quickly back to Al a couple of the leaps that had contributed to that saying. Almost immediately, Al remembered another leap when the man Sam had been sent to help, had at one point, looked _him_ right in the eye and demanded to know who he was. It was that last memory that started Al's fingers flying over the buttons as he issued a command to Ziggy to make any necessary 'fine tuning' adjustments to his brainwave patterns to prevent Derek Emerson from getting another glimpse of him.

As he waited for Ziggy's confirmation that she had accomplished the task, he thought back to the moment or so he'd spent in the Emersons' bedroom checking on Derek while Sam waited at the foot of the stairs that morning. It gave Al a case of cold goosebumps all over his body to realize that he had been not just seen, but seen and heard. _'If only I'd looked closer at him, I might have seen that he wasn't asleep, and Sam might not be in this situation'_ he silently castigated himself. However, he wasn't allowed to dwell on an endless looping of 'if only'. His attention was jerked back to the moment, the sound of Sam's warily uttered, "Uh oh," causing him to straighten up and turn quickly to follow Sam's line of sight. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled even more intensely upon seeing where Derek Emerson was. Sparing a look at the handlink, he pressed a familiar sequence of buttons, his voice low, his tone intense as he ordered, "Ziggy, put me as close as you can to Derek Emerson…off to one side…and not too close." Instantly, the Observer found himself relocated to a position that made him look like he was standing on the surface of the rain-agitated water two or three feet to the left of Derek Emerson.

'_What the hell are you doing?'_ he wondered as he watched the other man's activity. Moving a step closer, Al leaned a bit toward Derek, narrowing and sharpening his focus, trying to peer down into the opaque water. Then he felt a streak of icy cold run down his spine when he heard a soft, "There you are," and a moment later the woman-hating serial killer straightened up, one fist twined tightly in a mass of long, wet blonde hair. The body of the woman to which the hair was still attached rose slowly up, breaking the surface of the water with a little splash. Al could have sworn he felt his skin literally crawling when Derek tugged on the corpse's hair; the action made the body roll slightly in the water in Al's direction, seemingly causing her dead eyes to look into the Observer's own dark eyes. As Derek turned in the opposite direction from where Al stood watching him, and returned to the shore, hauling behind him the water-logged body of Allison Kent, Al had Ziggy reposition him beside Sam. For several seconds, he and the leaper silently watched as Derek bent down, grabbed the body under its arms to drag it halfway out of the water then drop it again in the mud.

"Al, who is that?" Sam whispered, his gaze fixed on the macabre sight just a few feet from him. He vigorously shoved away the scene that flashed through his mind - himself lying cold and lifeless in the mud at the feet of a cold-blooded killer.

The muscles along Al's jaws tightened a moment before he said bluntly, "That _was_ Allison Kent. At least she's still intact."

"Intact?" Sam questioned but even that was forgotten when he saw Derek turn away from the body on the ground and start back toward him. Even through the rain and gloomy overcast, there was no mistaking the fury burning in the man's eyes as he walked up to Sam. As Derek drew nearer, Sam looked up into his eyes and tried to reason with him.

"Derek, please…d..don't d..d..do this," he began, his teeth chattering lightly.

Derek's steps slowed, stopping only when he stood directly in front of his kneeling wife. Fury boiled inside him as he looked down at her, scanning Tommie's bruised and frightened face, terror plain in her eyes as she pleaded, but her pleading only stirred up the heat of the bitterness and resentment simmering inside him. As it had for each of his previous victims, and now with his wife, it just confirmed to Derek the two-faced fickleness of women, and he drew back one hand and slapped Tommie's face hard.

"I thought you were different, Tommie!" he shouted down at the woman on her knees. "But no! You're just like all those other air-kissing, 'I've got money so I'm better than you' rich bitches I have to deal with! You string a guy along until you get what you want and when you get tired of him, you toss him aside and go looking for fresh meat. Well not this time, Tommie!" Derek shouted. Deep rumbles of thunder seemed to echo his fury. "Not this time!"

When Derek started slapping him as if bent on trying to remove his head from his shoulders, all Sam could do was duck his head in an attempt to protect himself as much possible. He tried a couple of times to get a word in edgewise, to try and counter the accusations, but it wasn't until Derek paused to catch a breath that Sam got a fleeting chance to speak. Knowing he was risking, at the very least, a punch in the face, Sam cautiously raised his head and tipped his head back just enough to peer up through the steady heavy downpour at the man standing over him. He licked his lips then dared to challenge the blame with which he…Tommie was being charged, saying, "You're wrong, Derek. I would never…."

"YOU LYING WHORE!" Derek roared. The heat of his fury rose up like a ball of flame from a ruptured gas main, and he resumed raining heavy, teeth-rattling slaps and punches against his wife's head and every part of her body within reach. When she ducked her head in an effort to protect herself, Derek screamed, "I SAW him, Tommie! I HEARD him! " Just uttering the damning accusations were enough to further inflame his outrage, and Derek grabbed a handful of his wife's hair and jerked her head back viciously, bending her back until she cried out. He shook her head violently then with his other hand snatched the switchblade out of his pocket again, pressed the lever to expose the blade then put the razor sharp point to the pulse throbbing wildly in the side of her neck as he continued to accuse her.

"I SAW HIM, TOMMIE! He was in our bedroom…OUR BEDROOM...this morning standing at the foot of the bed! I'm laying there, injured and you send your lover upstairs to…what? Make sure that I was still out of it so I wouldn't interrupt you while you were screwing him downstairs?"

"No, Derek!" Sam gasped then sucked in his breath at the feel of the razor sharp blade pressing against the carotid artery in the left side of his neck. Though soaked to the skin, at that moment, Sam's mouth was drier than an Alabama cotton field in mid-July.

"I heard the two of you talking at the bottom of the stairs!"

Then another darker, more provoking thought occurred to him and with a furious roar Derek let loose more backhanded slaps around his wife's head and face even as she attempted to avoid the hits. "No!" he screamed. "You're worse than they are, Tommie! You're just like my mother! You're just as stubborn and thoughtless and selfish a bitch as she was! You denied me, Tommie. You denied me, just like she did. You, and all those other bitches like you, denied me the chance to get back the lifestyle that should have been mine." Pausing to catch a breath, Derek stood over the bound woman visibly shaking on the ground in front of him. Even the chill of the rain and wind wasn't enough to cool his rage. Panting lightly, he added, his tone icy in comparison to his temper, "But that's about to end."

-------

Like countless other hair-raising times in past leaps, Al wished he could switch places with Sam and handle the situation for him. Now, as with all of those other times, Al could only school himself to keep his cool and his wits about him. In spite of wanting to yell, to encourage Sam to try and fight back, he remained quiet because at this moment, Derek Emerson was the human equivalent of the nitroglycerin to which Al had likened him a few hours before to Verbena. The least little thing, even something so small as Sam flicking his gaze toward the Observer could have dire, possibly even fatal, consequences. So, standing there, ostensibly within arm's reach of his friend, the Observer just bit his tongue at the sight of the switchblade at Sam's throat again, praying for GTFW to give him just the smallest chance to gain his friend's attention for a few seconds.

It was a small sound, like a twig crackling underfoot that snagged the Observer's attention away from Sam. As Derek Emerson continued to rant, Al turned his head to look in the direction from which the sound had come. He scanned the area but saw nothing and turned back, but he didn't get fully turned toward Sam again when…

_...crack...crack..._

This time Al didn't wonder. He knew what he'd heard, and had Ziggy pinpoint and center him on whatever had snapped those twigs. Yet again he had to bite his tongue to keep from yelling, this time though out of gratitude, when he found himself standing to one side of a man with his weapon draw and ready as he peered cautiously around the broad tree trunk behind which he was hiding. Al didn't need to see a badge to figure out that the man was a cop, likely a detective since he was wearing a regular suit instead of a uniform.

"Thank God," Al whispered fervently under his breath after a moment then frowned slightly when he saw the man turn his head to glance in the direction beyond the Observer. Turning, Al looked around, quickly spotting another figure – a woman – also with her gun drawn and ready, who acknowledged the eye contact with her partner with a couple of quick nods. But for as glad as he was that GTFW had decided to help Sam, there was one small matter that could still see this situation end in his friend's death. The Observer's mind raced as he scanned the distance between the tree where the detective was hiding to where Sam was on his knees and at Derek's mercy. The solution clicked into place in his thoughts and Al didn't hesitate to put it into motion.

"Ziggy, put me next to Sam," Al called out. The words were barely out of his mouth when he found himself once again beside his friend still at the mercy of Derek Emerson's murderous, revenge-bent rage.

For several more seconds, he didn't utter a sound, watching and waiting until Derek at last removed the blade from Sam's neck before he made any sound at all and then, speaking just loud enough for Sam to hear him clearly.

"Sam, don't look at me, just listen," Al instructed, enunciating each word precisely. "There's a cop behind one of the trees about thirty feet behind you to the right. I don't who he is or how he got to be here; what's important is that he's here. But the sticky part, is that if he tries to rush in here to save you, Derek will see him and... and he'll probably cut your throat before the guy gets halfway to you." He paused just long enough to lick his lips quickly then went on. "If you can manage to fall over and maybe wiggle around so that when slime ball goes to get you up again, he's turned around...facing the water... then that cop just might have a chance to jump Derek."

If Al hadn't been positive that there was no way that Derek Emerson could hear him, he would have sworn that that's what had happened when Derek straightened up for a moment, switchblade still in hand and glaring down at Sam then reached his free hand toward his friend. "Now, Sam, now!" he yelled.

At the mercy of a madman, in the midst of the continuing physical abuse and intimidation, and hurting and shaking from fear and cold, Sam mentally grabbed at the strand of hope in the form of Al telling him about the cop, and held on tight. With his heart thudding like a trip hammer in his chest, he watched Derek stand up then in the next moment when he reached his free hand towards him, Sam saw his chance and went for it like his life depended on it...and it did. He wasn't pretending when he reacted, crying out wildly, "OH GOD! DEREK! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!" When Derek cursed and grabbed at him, Sam deliberately threw himself backwards and began kicking and scrabbling with his feet and legs, struggling to roll over in the mud so he was facing the path and the trees lining it, behind one of which was a man, a police officer who was, quite likely, his only hope of escaping becoming another one of Derek Emerson's victims. Hearing Derek's cursing escalate to screaming, Sam, having managed to get rolled over, now on his belly in the mud and ignoring the pain in his bound hands and wrists enduring his own weight upon them, looked toward the trees, but he saw nothing. But Al had said the man was there and he was going to hang onto that, do everything he possibly could until...

'_...until he can get his hands on this maniac,'_ Sam's own instinct to survive and trust in his friend refused to let his thoughts focus on anything but hanging onto that strand of hope.

---

With a roar of rage, Derek got out of the way of his wife's frantically kicking feet. Moving around so he was facing her, he used the side of one of his boots to cuff Tommie against one side of her head. When she cried out and stopped struggling for a moment, Derek moved with the swiftness of a falcon plummeting to capture its prey in mid-flight, grabbing a handful of his wife's hair and pulling her head back so he could see her face somewhat, then shook her head. "Stop, Tommie!" he shouted. As he did so, Derek spared a few seconds to glance around to get his bearings, his gaze going immediately to the body of his latest victim where it lay at the water's edge of the little bayou. "Stop it, or I'll snap your neck right here and now and then dump your useless, whoring body in the bayou for alligator bait right along side Allison!"

---------

Under cover of the heavy downpour and accompanying constant deep rumbles of thunder, upon reaching the opening through which he had seen the two figures disappear. Boo Lanson hesitated just long enough to risk a cautious glance through the opening then darted as quietly as he could through the opening, keeping to the shadows. From behind each tree where he paused, Boo risked being seen, peering carefully around it to get a look at the couple now close to the edge of the little bayou who, he would be willing to bet, were Derek and Tommie Emerson. As he watched the couple, just waiting for an opportunity to make his move, the veteran detective's gut instinct told him that if his partner hadn't paid attention to her own instincts, Tommie Emerson likely would have ended up the alligator bait that her husband had just shouted at her. Only because Siena Jackson hadn't let a practical joke cloud her instincts, did Boo and she now have a chance to save Tommie Emerson from a gruesome fate.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the area and a flicker of reflected light caught Boo's attention again. This time he caught a glimpse of the point of origin of the flash. Seeing the knife in the one of the enraged man's hands kept Boo where he was. He waited hoping that luck or fate would work in Tommie Emerson's favor and give him at least a chance to rescue her. Like the vast overall majority of people in law enforcement, Boo didn't like having to draw his weapon. He liked even less having to fire it, which he'd only done twice in twelve years on the job. In spite of the rain running down his face and into his eyes, he kept his gaze focused on the scene unfolding some thirty feet from him. He didn't want to shoot Derek Emerson but he would if it came to that.

He wondered a moment later when it seemed like the Emerson woman was talking, seemingly to herself, but dismissed that when he saw Derek Emerson wade out into the water. That wondering grew when the man bent down and began feeling around beneath the water for something. The wondering vanished when he watched Derek Emerson straighten up then haul the body of a woman onto the muddy narrow shore of the bayou then return to threaten his wife again.

While primarily focused on the scene unfolding on the narrow muddy bank of the little bayou, Boo did flick his gaze around every few seconds, peering at his surroundings through the heavy rain. It was during one of those moments that his gaze was caught by a movement off to his right. Immediately he looked toward it, only relaxing minutely when a weak flicker of lightning let him catch a glimpse of a familiar, if sodden, head of red hair. Siena. They communicated from their respective hiding places with hand signals and head nods, reaching an agreement in the space of seconds. It was just as well, because it was at that moment that both detectives' attention was jerked back to the terrified woman on her knees and now begging for her life. They watched as she fell backwards, doing everything she could to escape her husband's murderous intentions.

Every muscle and sinew in Boo Lanson's body was tensed, adrenaline pouring into his bloodstream like a cataract at Niagara Falls but still he hesitated. Experience as well as instinct was what enabled Boo to let a few more seconds escape as he watched Derek Emerson's quick move to subdue his wife's struggles. "Come on," he murmured under his breath. "Just give me a chance to take him out. Just a shot..." Boo had no way of knowing that a man in holographic form had appeared at his side just as he whispered those words. Neither was he aware of that hologram disappearing from his side just as fast, reappearing beside the figure all of them saw as Tommie Emerson. Again, in anticipation of getting a clear shot at Derek Emerson, he continued sighting down the barrel of his weapon. In the next instant though, something caused him to break his intent sighting and after another moment he quickly holstered his gun. Not once as he did so did Boo Lanson's focus move so much as a centimeter from the scene on the muddy bank ahead of him.

---------

Once his wife quit struggling, Derek used her hair to roughly aid her in getting onto her knees again, and then pulled her head back until her throat was exposed.

"There's no one around to hear you scream, Tommie," he warned her coldly, leaning down close to her face to glare at her, bringing the switchblade up before her eyes. He watched her blue eyes widen, saw her swallow hard before straightening up again. Grabbing the front of her shirt just above her left breast, Derek nicked the material then used his hand to rip and tear away the patch of material on which Tommie's name had been embroidered. He glanced at it then stepped around her.

------

When he started breathing again after watching Derek cutting the front of his shirt, Sam waited until the man straightened up and was looking at the patch. He started to speak but his teeth chattered and he clamped them together a moment. Looking up again and finding Derek's malevolent gaze fixed on him, he dared to speak.

"Wh...what are you going to do with that?" he asked.

-------

Derek glanced first at the bit of soggy blue knit material then smiled down at his wife. He had to raise his voice a bit to be heard over the thunder rumbling through the dark sky. "This little bit of your shirt with your name on it is going into one of Allison's hands," he said. "That way, IF the cops ever find what's left of her … and you… it'll eventually lead them back to you," he said, almost casually as he studied the bit of fabric then looked down at her again. "They'll figure that when you dragged the body into the water, you disturbed a wild alligator who dragged you under, drowning you before it made a meal of you." Seeing the heavy trembling that enveloped his wife's kneeling figure at that, Derek mocked her, dangling the bit from her shirt before her eyes. "Wanna watch me give it to Allison to hang onto?"

A cruel smirk came across his face when she ducked her head. "I'll be right back, honey. Don't go no where," he continued mocking Tommie then walked down to the water's edge. There he wedged the bit of ripped cloth into Allison Kent's cold, rigid right hand.

After studying the corpse a moment, he leaned down and with the ease of experience, used the switchblade to slice off the corpse's nose then returned to his very soon to be late wife. He took a twisted pleasure in showing it to Tommie, so much so that when she didn't raise her head when he told her to do so, Derek bent down to hold the severed nose before her eyes. When Tommie shrank back as much as she could, the cruel amusement vanished from his visage. "It's a nice addition to the rest of my trophies." For a moment, he studied Allison's nose, even shifted his hand a bit causing it to tumble around on his palm. His amusement with the action dissipated with the same speed it had emerged. With care, Derek put his hand, still with severed body part in it, into his pocket and withdrew a small empty sandwich bag. Depositing Allison Kent's nose into the bag, he sealed the bag then held it up at eye level in the rain, looking at it from different angles then shoved the bag into his pants pocket. For a moment husband and wife stared into each other's eyes before he spoke, his manner calmer, his expression triumphant as he said loudly to be heard over another rumble of thunder, "That bag is plenty big enough to hold another trophy, Tommie and it's going to...right now."

--------

As Al heard Derek's ominous threat, the handlink chose that instant to chirp and he spared a few precious seconds of focus to retrieve the information Ziggy was transmitting to him.

"What is it, Ziggy?" he asked sharply.

"I have recalculated the probabilities for this leap," Sam's brainchild hybrid computer related. "As of this moment, there is an eighty-seven point seven percent probability that Dr. Beckett will be killed within the next two minutes and thirty-five seconds."

Hearing that, the Observer's mind processes went to Mach 3, his attention continuously shifting from his friend to Derek. Looking back up the path, he scanned the clump of trees, his focus sharpening as he saw a shadow move and then kept moving. His already racing pulse increased as he saw that the police officer had moved into the open and had begun to make his move toward Derek and Sam. _Think! What can Sam do to keep this bastard focused on him?_ Suddenly the answer leapt into his thoughts. Moving to Sam's side, Al spoke crisply, keeping his comments concise and to the point. He didn't even flinch like Derek and Sam both did in reflexive reaction to an especially deep boom of thunder.

"Sam," he said, pitching his voice to be heard clearly over the heavy rain and thunder. "That cop I told you about is moving this way right now, buddy. But you've got keep Derek's attention focused on you if that cop's gonna have a chance to get to him before..." There was no need for him to finish the sentence.

Moving around Derek and Sam, Al leaned down, positioning himself so that the leaper could look at him without making Derek suspicious. Al took a quick breath and started with the first thing that came into his mind from his conversation with Tommie Emerson. As it turned out, it was the last thing Tommie had told him. "Sam, tell him 'no'!" he urged. Positioned as he was, the Observer had, as much as was possible with the seeming torrential downpour, an unobscured look at Sam's eyes. He clearly saw the frantic unspoken question in those green eyes: _Why?_ and he answered immediately.

"When I talked with Tommie a little while ago," Al said, keeping his response concise and to the point, "she said that telling Derek 'no' is what triggers him. It's a long story, but it stems from when he and his mom were disowned by her parents. His grandparents were filthy rich, and when Derek's mother, their only child, married some guy outside the social register after Derek's dad died, they disowned her and their grandson. He was born into wealth and apparently got used to getting and having whatever he wanted that money could buy. His mom telling her father 'no' and getting cut off from all that old money was probably what started it all. It finally got to a point where he couldn't take rich women brushing him off or telling him 'no', so he started killing every woman he became involved with who told him 'no'. My guess is that he cuts their noses off so they can't ever look down their noses again." He paused then added, his tone grim,

"Sam, Tommie told me about the trophies this sonofabitch is talking about. She says they're in a box in the closet under a pile of sweaters." Al went on, not pulling any punches, "Tommie didn't come right out and say what the trophies are, but seeing what he did to Allison, over there, I'd bet the farm that they're the noses of each of the eight women he's killed so far. No...no, nine women, counting the Kramer woman...the one the cops found in the bathtub yesterday?... he's murdered nine women in the last seventeen months. No," he corrected himself again. "It's ten now, counting Allison over there." Glancing at Tommie Emerson's murderous husband, Al urged, "Sam, try to get him to talk about Allison."

------

Listening to what the Observer was telling him, what Sam didn't dare do was take his eyes from the other man's face for even a second to glance at Al. All he could do was pray that Al's suggestion would be enough to keep him alive long enough for the law officer to get to Derek. Blinking rapidly against the rain running into his eyes, Sam peered up at Derek. "Wh…why did you kill her? A..Allison, I mean," Sam asked. He almost wished he hadn't when the mocking triumphant expression on Derek's face reverted suddenly to one of fury.

-------

Derek Emerson's expression darkened as he leaned down toward her, shouting. "Because I'm sick and tired of rich bitches like you and every other spoiled brat bitch like you, who get their jollies outta stringing me along." Releasing his hold on her arm, Derek grabbed his wife by the front of her throat and squeezed hard. While she gasped for breath, he put the blade to the side of her face at an angle that enabled her to glimpse the razor sharp edge, liking the way Tommie's eyes fixed on it as he continued to rant. "Every friggin' one of you bitches looked down your noses at me, but I put a stop to that. And now I'm gonna put an end to the two-faced, cheating, lying rich bitch I married!" The rage within Derek was rising, driving him to grab Tommie by one arm before straightening up and hauling her to her feet. As she staggered a bit getting her footing, Derek pressed the point of the switchblade against Tommie's belly, his tone dangerous as he snarled, "Move! It's time for you and Allison to get acquainted."

----

"To where?" Sam dared to ask when Derek had dragged him to his feet again. In those few precious seconds, Sam risked a look towards the Observer but even Al was forgotten as Sam got a clear look towards the path. The sight of a man – the police officer dressed in a rain-drenched dark suit-- charging full bore through the heavy gray downpour of rain toward he and Derek was, as far as Sam was concerned, the best sight he had ever witnessed in his life, bar none. Suddenly, the fear that Derek Emerson had instilled in him from the first moment of this leap right up to the moment was vanquished. Fear and uncertainty were flushed from his being and mind as the leaper felt a combined surge of adrenaline, the Beckett stubbornness and the determination not to give up rushed throughout his body as Sam Beckett screamed, "NO!" at the top of his lungs.

------

Experience, instincts and not a little luck all combined in the moment that Boo Lanson and Siena Jackson, both watching the couple intently, heard Tommie Emerson scream, "NO!" Neither consciously thought about their actions as each charged from his or her hiding place, Boo a moment faster than Siena, charging through the heavy downpour, praying that he would reach Derek Emerson and take him down before the raging killer had time to use the knife he held on his wife.

-----

Long afterwards, Al would find himself hard pressed, when looking back to this particular leap, to describe what happened next. Perhaps it was the huge mushrooming boom of thunder, rumbling and reverberating through the dark skies overhead with such intensity that he could have sworn he felt it in the Imagining Chamber. Or maybe it was the startling and unsettling feeling when suddenly the figure of Detective Boo Lanson charged through his aura. Whichever it was, the one thing he knew without doubt, was that the tension-riddled scenario rushed to a crescendo when he heard his friend scream, not in pain but in determined defiance.

------

Using the advantage of Derek still hanging onto his arm, Sam took a step back then jerked his arm hard, wrenching it free. In that same moment a massive crackling crash preceded a bolt of lightning that suddenly illuminated the entire area with a brilliance that reminded him of a powerful search strobe. But Sam didn't notice any of it. What he did notice, was how, in the midst of his raging intent to murder his wife, at the instant of the sudden powerful illumination caused by the lightning, Derek jerked back slightly, hesitating for a split second, his expression plainly startled. The leaper didn't wonder why, instead taking advantage of the moment to again scream, "NO!" and unconsciously praying that it would be long enough for the police officer to reach them and prevent his, Sam Beckett's, untimely death at the hands of the serial killer who was Tommie Emerson's husband.

--------

Tommie's sudden and unexpected surge of strength as she wrenched free of his grasp momentarily diverted Derek's rage, but in the next split second it boiled up again and he grabbed at her, screaming curses. However, in the other half of that split second Derek Emerson froze, his rage as abruptly disrupted as if he'd slashed it with the knife in his hand, for as the flash of lightning illuminated the area through the heavy rain, suddenly he wasn't looking at his wife. Rather, he was face to face with a man of lean build and close to his own height, a gray streak in his brown hair above his left eye, his face battered. The man was glaring defiantly at him. Derek's mouth sagged open then closed and reopened confusedly as words tried to make the transition from his boggled mind to his lips. Only one word managed to complete that journey, falling uncertainly from his lips as he stared into the unknown man's angry green eyes. "Tommie?" Somewhere on the confused fringes of his thoughts, it occurred to Derek that it was like the man had just been waiting for him to utter his wife's name before he reacted.

------

As the tension and confusion of the frenzied conglomeration of action and reaction of the moment continued to multiply exponentially, through it all, Sam Beckett's eyes never strayed from the startled visage of his would be murderer. He didn't hear the Observer's own frantic shouting in an attempt to be heard over the intense spring storm, urging him to keep Derek's focus on him. He didn't see the figures of Detectives Boo Lanson and Siena Jackson as they tore toward him, converging on him and Derek from different angles. Sam was unaware of everything except two things. The first was the sight of Derek's confusion. Somewhere in the speed of light computations that was his mind seeing, assessing, resolving and reacting to the visual and emotional facts exploding all around him, the second and more important realization was that his would-be murderer's hesitation was a direct result of the supercharged electrical activity of the lightning interfering with the aura surrounding him, thereby allowing Derek Emerson to see Sam for himself. For the first time since he'd leaped into Tommie Emerson's life, Sam had the upper hand, a fact that triggered an additional surge of adrenaline into his bloodstream, and there was no way in hell he was about to relinquish it. Seeing Derek jerk back, shocked even worse when another flash of lightning again interrupted Tommie Emerson's aura that surrounded him, Sam seized the advantage with the tenacity of a confronted badger.

Though still bound, Sam balled his hands into fists as much as possible then slammed them in the middle of Derek's chest with all his might and screamed, "No, Derek! I'm not afraid of you any more. I will not go down into that water!" He had no way of knowing how the cathartic effect of venting his own fear, as well as the reclamation of his confidence in himself, was reaching across time and infusing into his host. All Sam Beckett knew as he stayed right with Derek, following when he fell back a bit, unknowingly circling a few steps that brought him parallel to the bank of the little bayou where Allison Kent's body lay, was that Derek Emerson had lost his dominating stranglehold of fear over him.

As he took another step at the man, for a few seconds, Sam was caught off-guard when Al's voice managed to pierce his intense focus, screaming, "Sam!" just as his mind processed the sound of running feet. Less than a heartbeat later a flying blur of solid movement in the person of Detective Boo Lanson plowed into Derek Emerson like a runaway freight train, sending both men tumbling and rolling down the shallow muddy bank. Sam moved a step closer toward the two men, each now struggling to gain advantage over the other. Through the grey veil of the rain, it was the sight of Derek raising his hand still clutching the switchblade that had the same reaction on him as the sight of his true appearance had had on Derek, freezing the leaper where he stood. Subconsciously Sam realized that, by the angle ofDerek's hand as he slashed it downward toward the policeman over whom he had momentary advantage, a single swipe would likely mortally wound the man, but Sam couldn't move. Even the clear sound of Al screaming, "Sam, do something! He's gonna kill him!" couldn't break through and allow him to move to the officer's aid.

He was thankful beyond understanding when there was suddenly another blur of movement as a second figure flashed past him, rushing at the men on the ground with just enough time for that person to kick the knife out of Derek Emerson hands. The sight of that person –a woman—leaping into the fray, aiding her partner in subduing Derek had its own manner of catharsis on Sam. It was only as he watched the two law officers handcuffing Derek and hauling him to his feet that Sam recognized the woman as Siena Jackson, the detective he'd been certain had written him off as just another disturbed but basically harmless nut. It was in that second that another wave of revitalizing catharsis surged through Sam. He went willingly with that surge, rushing toward the three muddy figures standing at the water's edge, not stopping until he had plowed into Derek and sent him falling backwards across Allison Kent's corpse. He felt hands on his arms restraining him but that didn't matter to Sam as something Al had told him just moments ago about Tommie Emerson's husband flashed into his mind.

Leaning down toward the fallen killer, the leaper glared at Derek and screamed, "NO, Derek! I will not take the fall for this murder, nor any of the others that you've committed." Not breaking his locked gaze on Derek's face, Sam continued, every word he was saying scrubbing away every last crumb of fear that the man laying in the arms of one of his dead victims had created in him. "Because when the police search our house and find that little box on the shelf in your closet, they're going to lock you up and throw away the key and then you'll have years to listen to lots of people telling you NO!"

-----

Under other circumstances, Siena Jackson wouldn't have hesitated to physically force Tommie Emerson away from her husband. However, at this moment, recalling with crystal clarity her initial reaction upon seeing this same battered and plainly frightened woman a few hours before, all Siena did was apply just enough pressure on Tommie Emerson's arm to hold her where she stood. A quick glance at her partner, now standing slightly to one side and behind Derek Emerson, a steely grip on the man's right arm, allowed her to see in Boo Lanson's eyes his agreement with her decision about dealing with Tommie. Neither did Siena try to prevent Tommie Emerson's movement as the petite, battered woman got right up in her husband's face and screamed at him, "NO, DEREK! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! I hope you hear it every day you're in prison. And I hope to God that somebody says it to you the day you're executed! NO!"

Deciding that she really did need to move Tommie Emerson out of the way to allow her partner to get Derek Emerson away from the body still half in the water, Siena hesitated just a moment longer. As she quietly but firmly urged the young wife to move with her up the path, Detective Siena Jackson felt a sort of sense of satisfaction on behalf of the many battered women she had met and dealt with in her still young career. At the top of the path and just before stepping through the opening in the hedge and onto the green of the ninth hole, as she took a moment to remove the rope binding Tommie Emerson's wrists to her body, Siena didn't chide or admonish Tommie when the battered young woman took one small step toward reclaiming her sense of self worth and dignity as she shouted back down at her handcuffed husband, "One more thing, Derek…NO, I will not stay married to you a second longer than I have to!" before allowing herself to be guided a further, if only temporarily brief, distance from her husband.

------

It was, without a doubt in his mind, the most chilling and frightening moment Al Calavicci could remember of all of Sam's leaps to date. Not even the leap during which Sam had come within seconds of being electrocuted in the electric chair came close. Only when he watched the male detective tackle Derek Emerson did Al realize how hard his heart was pounding, as well as the fact that he'd been holding his breath. He felt like someone had opened a spigot and drained every last drop of his strength as the adrenaline began to dissipate from his body.

He had tried to get Sam's attention, once it was clear that his best friend was safe from the serial killer now in custody. Then, he stopped, choosing instead to watch and listen to Sam's emotional venting at Derek. When the female detective at last guided Sam up the path and onto the green of the ninth hole of the Kent estate golf course, Al had Ziggy recenter him beside his friend. In spite of the severe bruising on Sam's face, in spite of seeing Sam trembling as he chaffed his wrists, his teeth chattering because of his sodden clothes and the rain, it was the most relaxed he had seen the leaper in the last thirty plus hours. He didn't say a word as Siena Jackson told Sam, her voice firm yet still understanding, to stay put while she went to help her partner.

"D..don't worry," Sam told Siena, his teeth chattering like castanets in spite of his best effort to control it. "I won't move from this spot until you s..s..say I c..can." He watched the detective until she disappeared back down the path before he turned his attention to the Observer.

------

"You okay, Sam?" Al asked softly, smiling when Sam nodded and uttered a soft if chattered, "Uhhh…huh." He saw and understood the question that quickly appeared in Sam's eyes, and moved to answer it before the leaper could put the question into spoken form. The fact that the handlink chose that moment to squeal was as liberating for him – from the fear for his friend's life –as the leaper's words to Derek had been for him.

-----

Watching the way Al's fingers practically danced over the buttons on the handlink, Sam kept his voice low as he asked, "So what happens to Tommie? Is she okay now?"

-----

Al read the information scrolling across the handlink's small screen then met his friend's gaze, a grin blossoming across his face as he quipped, "If you'll pardon the pun… Tommie's as right as rain." He laughed aloud when Sam rolled his eyes, then continued. "Thanks to the advent of the use of DNA in criminal cases, which only really got started around 1986, Derek Emerson was eventually convicted of the murders of the ten women he killed during his seventeen month spree between November 1985 through April 1987. " Pressing another brief sequence of buttons on the handlink, Al added, "He was given a death sentence for each of the women. His last appeal was denied in September 1994, and he was executed by lethal injection in January of 1995."

Pausing, Al looked at Sam. He didn't say anything when Sam prompted him about Tommie. It heartened him no end to see the light of satisfaction appear in his friend's eyes when he finally related the major turn around in Tommie Emerson's life.

"Tommie did what you told Derek," Al started off. "She didn't let any grass grow under her feet, and by the middle of November 1987, her divorce from Derek Floyd Emerson was final. She was a star witness for the prosecution." Another sequence entered on the handlink brought up more good news. "She got some therapy to help her deal with the abusive crap Derek put her through as well as all the other stuff she was dealing with. And then the same year Derek was executed…in fact a month after he was executed…Tommie moved to Wyoming where she married a rancher. They're still together, just the two of them, and Tommie never steps foot back into Louisiana again."

-------

Every word Al uttered outlining the positive changes to Tommie Emerson's future, as a result of his intervention in her life, did more to warm Sam Beckett than the hot bath, warm bed and cup of tea he longed for, combined. Yet as a minute elapsed and then another and another slipped away, he looked questioningly at his Observer. Wrapping his arms around his rain-soaked body, Sam clamped his teeth together to keep them from chattering as he watched and listened as Al demanded, "Ziggy, why hasn't Sam leaped?"

-------

The feeling that over the years Sam had come to recognize almost from the first prickle, began a moment later. There was no time to question the Observer about the slow smile that appeared on his face that was, it was easy for Sam to assume, caused by whatever he was hearing from Ziggy. Just seeing Al give him a thumbs-up sign as the leaping effect intensified just before pulling him away was enough for Sam to know that Tommie Emerson was going to be okay.


	20. Chapter 20

WALKING WITH ACHILLES

EPILOGUE

After Al had gone back to check on Sam, Verbena had, as promised, returned to the Waiting Room to continue counseling with Tommie Emerson in whatever time she had left. However, after about twenty-five minutes, she began to recognize the signs of psycho-senergizing that sometimes occurred between a Visitor and Sam Beckett, especially during intense, emotionally charged situations. Having heard from the Visitor's own lips some of what her life was like up to the moment Sam had leaped into her life, the project's chief psychiatrist wasn't caught unawares when Tommie had become agitated. Verbena had, instead, wisely just watched as the battered young woman –the signs of her battered state visible only on the aura of the man whom GTFW had sent to help her—had paced round and around the Waiting Room. Where psycho-senergizing was concerned, it could be a gamble whether or not to intervene. The only hard and fast rule to which Verbena Beeks held herself regarding it, was to act only if it was plainly clear that the Visitor's immediate physical or mental well being was in danger by the psycho-senergizing. Knowing what Tommie's life had been like up to the moment of her appearing in the Waiting Room, Verbena remained vigilant. As it turned out, almost as soon as the psycho-senergizing began, it ended. Verbena didn't need to hear Ziggy say what she intuitively concluded when Tommie suddenly returned to sit on the side of the bed and looked to Verbena where she sat in the chair placed near by. When the Visitor didn't speak, Verbena took the lead. "What's wrong, Tommie?" she questioned, keeping her tone and voice calm.

Glancing around the large soft blue room before meeting the kind, understanding eyes of Dr. Beeks, Tommie shivered lightly, wrapping her arms over her chest and rubbing her palms up and down her arms.

"I'm so afraid."

Verbena, sensing how quickly her time with Tommie was slipping away, forced herself to maintain her calm, asking "Of what?" When Tommie finally answered, the psychiatrist felt her heart leap within her in gratefulness when the Visitor met her gaze and admitted, "Of being on my own. I've never been on my own before. I've always had someone to take care of me."

Rising from the chair, Verbena walked to the bed. Taking Tommie's hands in hers, she squeezed them gently and smiled at the young woman. "You still have someone to take care of you," Verbena told her. There was no such thing as Tommie not asking the next question; it was a given.

"Who? Who's going to take care of me?"

A broad, encouraging smile appeared on Verbena's face as she first hugged Tommie. Then, leaning back so she could look straight into those blue eyes, said firmly, "You. "

"I…I don't know…"

"Tommie," Verbena called the Visitor's name firmly. "Look at me." When their gazes met, the psychiatrist said, "I know we've only known each other a very short time but, when you were talking with Al, do you believe that he told you the truth?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am," Tommie said, not hearing the firmness in her voice.

Verbena's expression increased in matching degrees of confidence to her smile as she asked, "Do you trust me, that I have told you the truth?"

Tommie repeated again, "Oh, yes, ma'am, I do."

Verbina took a step back, still holding Tommie's hands, urging her to stand up and face her. When Tommie stood eye to eye with her, Verbena told her, "Now I want you to repeat after me: I am going to make it." She had the Visitor repeat the phrase a couple of more times. The third time she heard the ever so subtle change in Tommie Emerson's voice as she said, "I'm going to make it." The words were barely out of her mouth when Verbena saw Tommie's eyes half close then watched her sway slightly as if dizzy. Time was up.

Quickly the psychiatrist gave Tommie a warm hug and stepped back from her a bit, still holding her hands gently and looking into the blue eyes watching her intently. "Remember what Al told you, Tommie, and believe it, REALLY BELIEVE it. You are stronger than you realize, and I know you're going to make it."

Then, from one moment to the next Tommie Emerson was gone back to her life. After another moment, Verbena Beeks looked around the large room then exited it without comment and headed for her office to start her report on this leap.

Once more the Waiting Room was empty.

**The End**


End file.
